


I'm Your Dead Sea

by wherethewhiled



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-08 13:44:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wherethewhiled/pseuds/wherethewhiled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina and Emma through a series of sexual encounters.  It's how they know how to communicate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Struggling through a sigh, Regina comes, clutching at Emma’s blue jacket.

 

She does everything to keep her voice out of it. It isn’t easy, however, even after all the practice.

 

Eventually, her shoulders release, though her knuckles still strain against the back of her hand. She is gently out of breath. With some effort, she makes certain not to let herself dangle forward too far, tip the wrong way. Her thumbs rub vaguely side to side, and the unpleasant texture of the pleather sobers her more or less.

 

Letting go, she drops her head against the back wall of her office. Some early evening sun slides off the tilt of her jaw and down her throat, and Regina is grateful for some sensation on her skin. She glances out at her desk. The minute hand on the clock isn’t quite visible from this angle, and while she doesn’t bother stressing to find out, she does take several sluggish seconds to reorganize her scheduling for what's left of the night.

 

Very carefully, she closes her eyes. For just a moment.

 

As the wetness trickles towards her wrist, Emma slips her fingers out. Splaying her left fist along the wall for support, she leans over Regina, panting and a bit too warm, and considers whether she wants to just wipe it on her jeans.

 

The arm hangs lazily at her side.

 

“Get out,” Regina says, shoving past with the firm heel of a hand. “I have to pick up Henry.”

 

Emma barely bothers to bat an eye.

 

“Fine, but I’m coming over when my shift is done.”

 

She isn’t looking for a fight, to put more feeling, or any more drama into their arrangement, but fair is fair, and Emma needs her turn. While pulling thick curls off the one side of her neck, Emma notes a grating nagging in her chest growing in size and curses the lingering disappointments fluttering about. Before lifting her head, she sharply huffs out the rest of _that_ line of thought.

 

A window pops open, and the room relaxes a touch.

 

“Fine,” Regina concedes. Her voice sticks awkwardly. She resists clearing her throat and calling attention to it. She needs a glass of water.

 

Pursing her mouth over her _already_ returning frustration, Regina concentrates instead on tucking the crinkles of her faintly limp, white shirt further in, before zipping her trousers rather loudly. Absently then, she runs a hand through her hair, observing the Sheriff as she finally peels herself off of the wall.

 

Emma strolls over, opening the top draw for a tissue to clean her hand with. She decides she doesn’t want to have to smell the woman on her leg like that all night long. The vibrating echoes of Regina groaning, mouth mashed up beneath her ear will be more than enough of a parting shot. She rubs at the spot, hopefully fading the lipstick.

 

“See yourself out, Sheriff.”

 

They stand off, eye to eye, at either ends of the desk. The more sex they have, the less nerve they have left in reserve for occupying personal space.

 

“Are you deaf, Miss Swan?”

 

The ringing fever in her ears pushes Emma a little too far.

 

“Madam Mayor,” she grits out and manages to leave without incident.

 

-

 

The clock reads ten to ten, and the low lamps at Granny’s, it seems, are never near bright enough for the rumbling darkness outside. A couple of them flicker faintly, and Emma can’t be sure if they need changing, or whether they are simply bowing to the thick static in the air.

 

Losing interest, she pours herself another drink. The bottle clunks heavily on the rim of her glass, the Scotch sloshing out messily.

 

Emma is drunk, for no particular reason.

 

She recently hired a deputy, and it’s her second night off from patrol. Unfortunately, there just isn’t much else to do in a small town but for biding time. A long standing pang of discontent bleeds out to her restless feet, because staying anywhere too long has never been a good idea. She fidgets grumpily, the stool she is parked on seriously bugging her.

 

The front door tinkles and a pair of heels click across the diner.

 

Her mouth goes instantly dry. She’s been avoiding that sound all morning, afternoon and night (or so she tells herself). She shakes her head for the thought to leave her, but it doesn’t. Grinding her elbows into the bar, she reluctantly gives in to doing a sideways glimpse, only to discover what she already could sense, even after half a bottle; the one person she wants and doesn’t want to see, at the far end, very back of the diner, in a dark burgundy dress, tucking into a booth opposite Sidney Glass.

 

Emma openly gawks as Sidney folds his newspaper in a hurry, speaking in intimate tones and retrieves something small from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Placing it in the Mayor’s waiting palm, their fingers then curl over one another's and remain oddly clasped like that on the tabletop. While Regina sits straight and distant, Sidney is bent over, gesturing animatedly with his free hand.

 

It makes her flat out laugh to see how Regina could have any patience for his bumbling, confiding in the man, and allowing him, of all people, this bizarre, personal leniency.

 

Finishing her drink, Emma scratches irritably at her neck. The room thrums and whines as her pulse kicks against the fingertips. There is too much blistering inside her right now. Slumping off the stool, she throws a few bills on the counter. Looking over again, she marks how Regina smirks and squeezes his hand before taking the item. She should have studied how to read lips, on top of the stealing cars, and wallets, and chasing down sleazy men.

 

A woman though, she has never tackled, and she thinks, maybe she will tonight. Because _that_ woman is trouble; shuffling from the booth like an excessive fog, rolling out languorously, she flaunts every shape, every curve as she stands, as she leaves, as she coils around again, dipping over the man, hips jutting back, to murmur in close over his shoulder. He doesn’t dare catch her eye, but smiles readily and nods.

 

Emma yells out stridently, full out across the room, “Madam Mayor, I need to speak with you.”

 

Regina looks up, a kind of horror and annoyance hardening her brow; she flits her eyes once over, painfully wary of the scatter of people still sitting in the diner. It spurs Emma on.

 

“It’s about my new deputy. I have questions. About the budget, I mean.”

 

She thinks she covers pretty well, except Regina merely clears her throat and continues to glare.

 

“We can talk back at the Sheriff’s office.” Emma shifts her heels and jams her hands into the back pockets. “Because there are some documents you should probably take with you. Before the budget meeting, you know,” Emma raises her voice,“ _tomorrow morning_.”

 

“Sheriff, it’s late,” she snaps in return, but Regina can feel a tickle in her tongue about to slip down the back of her throat and refrains from jumping the gun. She exhales discreetly. “But I suppose, if your questions are quick, you can walk me to my car.”

 

Regina does what she can, however Emma makes the exit clunky and awkward, holding the door wide, then practically sticking to her from behind, shoving at her feet. She’s about to snap again, when steps past the diner window, Emma pounces and drags her forcibly down the side of the building to a corner of a small loading area, where the air is nippy and the ground is rough. Their shoes scrape and trip, the overcast night making it particularly hard to see, with only a single, aged yellow light from above the ‘employees only’ door diffusing a dusty, meagre scrap of glow.

 

“What did he give you?” Emma seethes and pins Regina to the uneven brick. Her hand fills the palm Regina had used to cling to Sidney, spreading between her fingers.

 

Craning her head to the side, Regina watches as they wriggle against submitting. Suddenly, Emma is pressing down on her wrist, delicate skin pinching on the brick until an aching grunt escapes from her, whistling past her bared teeth.

 

“The hell you two doing now?” She sucks and rolls her tongue knowingly where Regina likes it most along the neck, meaning on making marks, when it dawns on her. “Did you know I was in the diner?”

 

The blood in Emma lurches about, her mouth breathing hot against Regina’s jaw.

 

“Don’t flatter yourself, dear.”

 

“You dirty fucking whore.”

 

A heavy moan rips out, and Regina is cringing even as her hands are dropping to grasp at Emma’s ass, worried all of a sudden about having to walk back out the length of the alley alone. It cannot be helped. She starts to reach underneath, rubbing at the crotch of Emma’s jeans from behind. She gets loud.

 

The muffled quickies in the office no longer satisfy like they used to.

 

Emma can hardly believe the sounds. They make her red and mad, and in a brute sort of urge for dominance, she flips Regina haphazardly, in between scrabbling to lift her dress, and yanking her black stockings a large way down her thighs.

 

“Let’s see just how wet you are.”

 

She fucks Regina with two fingers; adds a third until the Mayor is pushing at the wall for leverage, brimming with both the thrill and the humiliation of sleeping with an enemy.

 

Feeling manic and feverish, Regina wishes she could get her hands around the brick. Short, familiar prayers stumble like lost children under her breath, even as she is swinging her hips back for more.

 

A roar of thunder passes overhead.

 

They continue on without thought or understanding of where they are, or what has led them here. And though Emma cannot make out the words, she’s sure she is hearing what are words, and starts to kiss at the side of Regina’s face.

 

As she dribbles down the inside of her thigh, Regina swears never to let Emma see Henry again.

 

-

 

She doesn’t open the door all the way.

 

Gripping securely to the edges of her home, palms on either side, guarding the threshold, Regina arches a brow then at the distracted gaze meandering her bare arms.  It isn’t often she is without a jacket of some kind.

 

“How nice of you to show,” she drawls. “Did you bring anything?”

 

“Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

 

She is more or less amused until she reminds herself of the innumerable scores to settle, and like a drug, her anger filters through the microscopic fibers of her again.

 

“Of course you think you do.” Her insides – stomach, heart, and lungs – wind tautly, twisting neatly.

 

“You letting me inside?”

 

“I just tucked Henry in for bed. I can’t be sure he’s asleep yet,” she spits.

 

The dig is low, it’s cheap, and using her son to the land it is vulgar, but then again, Regina is at a loss for what more she isn’t incapable of.

 

“So what,” Emma shrugs sourly, “we’re gonna chat in your doorway until we know?”

 

“My, are we in a hurry.”

 

“Whatever Regina, you called me. I got a long day tomorrow, if you’re going to be like this, I’m leaving.”

 

“No Sheriff, _stay_ ,” Regina blurts, blinking stiffly. “Or rather I suppose,” she heaves a low, irritaed sigh. “Come on in.”

 

Emma brushes by gruffly.

 

Not caring to be lead tonight, she trudges upwards, abandoning the Mayor in the foyer without so much as a second thought. At the top of the stairs though, she tosses a look towards the side of the manor where Henry lies – she hopes – safe and sound and her throat closes like an allergic reaction. Briskly, Emma veers off the other direction.

 

Trailing several paces behind, Regina curls a fist against her side. Her eyes are hard and tight.

 

She is the odd one out in this triangle of theirs, no matter how they cut it, and an overwhelming anguish surges in at the realization, that she is merely a holding place – a means to an end – until they can be free to have the one they truly want. She wants to break something, crush something, kill someone.

 

Breathing heavily, she wades through the grief, musters together a crumb of jealousy and clings to it.

 

By the time she slinks through the door, Emma is already dumping her cuffs, her nightstick, and with a thwacking yank, her thick, leather belt onto the end of the bed.

 

The sheer bravado radiating off the blonde, in her simple cotton, broad features, and unruly hair, revives in Regina a crackling, current of lust. It clatters in her chest like over-hanging pots and pans in the midst of a natural disaster. She closes her mouth, stuffing the feeling back. This evening is about reclaiming control – no melting, no whimpering, no matter the cost.

 

“My house isn’t soundproof, you know.”

 

Emma smiles smugly, “I think you should be the one worrying about waking the neighbours.”

 

Regina returns the smile with exaggerated disdain. Stalking off then, a storm brewing in her, bursting with wind and lightning and the like, she preps the room: spreading the drapes, flipping the bedside lights on, rustling the covers away.

 

“You have a tolerance for pain, Sheriff?”

 

“I’m talking to you aren’t I? I mean you’re the biggest pain in the ass I know.” Emma chucks her jacket carelessly.

 

“ _Don’t, remove anything_ ,” she growls a little out of control. The blades of her shoulders clench at the bitter taste of her tone. “We haven’t started.”

 

She glances at Emma sternly, raw contempt in the pits of her eyes, and retreats inside the walk-in closet.

 

Seeking every chance she can get to refuse the Mayor, Emma plops down petulantly on the bed to tug out of her boots. When Regina reappears though, she is carrying a tremendous, oversized crocodile bag. It drops to the plush sheepskin rug with a thud, several pieces inside rattling menacingly. The size of that bag, concealing whatever feasible toys or playthings, is no joke. There isn’t much that Emma fears anymore, but she fears she is excruciatingly out of her depth here. She steps away from the bed.

 

“Looks like Madam Mayor isn’t so innocent after all,” she supplies, hesitantly.

 

Parting her lips, Regina tenses, unsure how to feel about the comment; the murky history it dredges creaking the walls, the ceiling, the legs of the furniture. She always thought of this existence as a reset, the do-over she deserves. Then again, she has never been good at leaving things behind.

 

“I thought I told you to keep your hands off your clothes.”

 

Emma scratches at the base of her throat, toes creeping into the carpet.

 

“You were taking too long.”

 

Regina bends down, unzipping the bag. She is reaching her limit. Her ribs extend painfully around the blackness inside of her.

 

“What’s the safeword, dear?”

 

“Safeword? Right, uh. Forest, I guess.”

 

It pricks her differently than the last one. It brings losing her son into the equation, brings images of him babbling on and on about fairytales, about curses, Emma thumbing through the book, speculating, plotting their next adventures, bonding over trees, and horses and princes, and magic, all to a swirling mass clogging her throat.

 

Standing, Regina takes in the blonde one last time, as she is now, and spies a glint of guilt sputtering in the greens of Emma’s gaze.

 

Gliding her dress to the floor with a hiss of relief, Regina picks up the gag, and the crop, and the nightstick.

 

The first round does nothing to assuage her. Two hours in and she thinks she will sleep through the night, at least.

 

“You think I’m evil now?” She whispers it, face down in the crook of Emma’s neck.

 

“I think you’re a bitch,” Emma stammers in reply.

 

-

 

“Regina, seriously, what the fuck!” The bathroom door rears on its hinges, slamming the wall and bouncing back vigorously at Emma, who wrestles with it to get out of her way.

 

“Language, Miss Swan.”

 

The faucet squeaks as she cuts the water. Grabbing a paper towel from above the sink, Regina sniffs then, and begins to dry her hands. “If you cannot be a role model to Henry,” she continues, maintaining a flat, even tone and a resolute eye line on her task, “at the very least have enough maturity to keep your appalling behaviour off of school property.”

 

“Hey, I was invited to this thing.”

 

“Not by me,” Regina stresses.

 

Emma can’t understand why this same, impossible argument is happening yet again, making fists and grabbing at the air out of exasperation; every encounter between them, seeming to her, an endless cycle of the exact same patterns and mindless routines, nothing ever progressing but for the pileup of bitter misunderstandings.

 

“Okay, yeah, sure Mary Margaret had the decency to think that it might be cool for me to get to participate in one of Henry’s school functions, but I double-checked with you.”

 

“And here you are.”

 

“What is with the attitude?”

 

Regina’s jaw tightens. The judgmental tone alone lights her nerves and starts her heart thumping a different rhythm. Gazing up at the dull, stained mirror, she spots an odd spasm in the hollow beneath her eye, and pivots away abruptly, tucking some hair around an ear.

 

Ahead of the door, Emma folds a pair of defiant arms square across the chest, and hums an assertive note of persistence at her. Regina looks away, suppressing a scowl.

 

She is ready for this day to be over.

 

Striding forward, Regina flicks the paper towel into a nearby garbage can, and yearns for some of her old, black magic. She shivers at the thought, against the rigid seams of her garments, and turns on the Sheriff in a measured move, tugging and straightening at her blazer.

 

“Whatever do you mean, dear?” The false graciousness plunges an octave, “This is how we talk.”

 

She allows just a beat of silence to drop before reaching for the large, brass handle. Emma however is more than prepared, promptly barring the escape with a solid and clenching arm.

 

“And the petty little games back there?”

 

Regina huffs, rapidly losing patience and control. “What do you want, Miss Swan?”

 

It’s a perfect, wide open opportunity, and Emma hurriedly gathers all the things she believes are wrong between them into her mouth, mindfully outfitting them to be deployed in what will no doubt be a lengthy war, to finally change things maybe, fingers crossed, except nothing comes out. For all her closet theories and half-baked judgments, when actually put on the spot – and left staring at the impossibly attractive face of the woman, and not the villain she likes to conjure – the whole lot evaporates, and Emma is stuck with only a sort of abstract wanting for something better crammed close to her chest.

 

She can think of nothing to do but kiss her.

 

Regina is quick to wrench her lips away, resentment vibrating off the peak of her cheeks and in the stitch of her brow. Their bodies linger though, barely inches apart, the stringent smell of cleaners clouding around their faces. Regina is starting to feel caged again. Strangling upwards under the chin, she whacks Emma’s head against the door and grimaces at the thudding creeping up her own throat.

 

“What, you only like it rough, Madame Mayor,” the scorn in Emma long past the point of taunting. “Or do you always just use sex as some hateful way to torture people?”

 

“I don’t hate you,” the retort fires out like an unexpected shot exploding out of a jammed rifle.

 

Her knees grow weak, and for all the wrong reasons.

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

Fraught and unthinking Regina lunges, lips first, to stop the looming conversation, to take it back to what they know, will the rest of whatever admissions are left in her today to pour through her mouth, and the evidence to be obliterated in each escalating kiss, and bite, and pressure from her tongue.

 

Emma doesn’t have the strength to protest. Instead she loses herself searching for some immediate way beneath Regina’s complicated clothing, a path to bare skin without the trouble of undoing the whole thing; skimming over the tucked shirt, the tight belt, the hidden clasps, the tiny buttons, until at last giving in and deciding on steering them to a stall.

 

The stall door bangs chaotically as they work to maneuver into the cramped and awkward space. Emma’s hands grope over the top of the stall, for a way to lean without toppling, while a thumb works to flatten the stubborn door away. Hissing, she stops dead in her tracks.

 

Regina is roughly ploughing her nails low against Emma’s stomach. Briskly, she wedges her fingers past the border of Emma’s denim, driving them deep until the warmth and the wetness is rushing over the tips, not even bothering with the buckle, or the zipper, craving the obstacles, needing the struggles.

 

Their breaths echo unevenly.

 

“Hello? Is everything alright?” The voice is soft and tiny. Pushing through the door, Mary Margaret tries again, a tad louder. “Henry is worried about the two of you.”

 

Immediately, Regina’s hand flies out. Her elbow smacks the stall door just as Emma catches her knuckles on an edge in a noisy fumbling to retract her arms.

 

Fortunately, Mary Margaret doesn’t see much apart from the back of the garish red leather, the racket, more than anything, scaring and distracting her. In fact, before the bewildered schoolteacher can even raise her hands to cover the yelp falling out like a rock off a cliffside, Regina is already barging out from inside the stall. And with far more push than necessary.

 

Out of habit, Emma snags a wrist and jerks the Mayor straight back to staring her down again.

 

“Emma, no!” Mary Margaret shrieks. “Think of Henry!”

 

“Please, Miss Blanchard, _I am the only one_ who thinks of Henry.” Her voice erupts viciously, the thought of her son like a trip wire. In an instant, it sucks every scrap of lust and panic from her body. “And you had better leave now, Miss Swan, or there will be consequences.”

 

“Oh no, Madam Mayor, please, Emma means no harm, really.”

 

“ _It’s fine_ , Mary Margaret, I got it.” She squeezes the wrist in her grasp firmly in warning, and in spite of herself, to some small extent in reassurance, for Regina to keep it together in front of Mary Margaret. Releasing then, Emma softens slightly, and Regina scoffs, stalking off for the sinks. “Tell Henry we’ll be out in a minute.”

 

Mary Margaret leaves uncertain, but choosing to put her faith in Emma.

 

“You think she saw anything? Or heard something? We weren’t making any sounds, were we?”

 

“I meant what I said.”

 

“Yeah, I heard you. I’ll go when the book presentation things are done.”

 

“No,” Regina snatches at a paper towel, “you will go _now_.” Her chest collapses around that last word, lungs shuddering, and refilling unsteadily. “Henry has had to deal with enough of your antics today.”

 

(The subtext roars like a train smashing through the drywall, the piping, the crunching, the screeching of metal shredding tiles, shards of mirror and porcelain flailing through the spraying water.)

 

Furrowing her brow then, Emma swallows uneasily at the sight of the Mayor, drying her hands for a second time. She watches intently, holding a breath, noticing the meticulous manner in which the woman rubs at each finger individually, and the tremble in every single one of them.

 

“Look,” Emma ventures, frowning, “You’re his mom. I get it.” The wild, vulnerable look Regina gives at that startles Emma into feeling, all of a sudden, like a bully. Her mouth lolls open, taken aback. “I just miss him sometimes, okay? I’m gonna go say bye now - I got a lot of paperwork to get to anyways.”

 

They hold each other’s eyes.

 

Before Emma can turn to leave, a forgotten twinge, from that night, way back, when they met for the very first time, compels Regina to return the out of character gesture with one of her own, reaching for the blonde and kissing her, meaningfully, in a rare moment of warm feeling for the woman. Separating herself, Regina nods curtly; the ‘thank you’ she is thinking hanging firmly to the tip of her tongue.

 

“Say goodbye to Henry.”

 

-

 

It isn’t hostile enough, the way Emma counters, and the way they are currently yanking and stabbing at one another, out in the street, with the chill whipping around them, but Regina is determined to get them there today. Her curse is changing, time is on the run from her, what was once customary, clockwork and safe is splintering; a truce is not on the agenda.

 

She needs their animosity.

 

Gritting her teeth and biting the bullet, Regina advances, closing the gap.

 

“You’ve had your fun,” she snarls, a deep, desperate part of her willing bygones to take hold. “It’s time you moved on, Miss Swan.”

 

“No, Regina, you do not get to intimidate me just like that.” The wind howls in accord with her point, except Emma isn’t on her game right now, and slumps her shoulders uncomfortably.

 

The roads are wet still from the afternoon rain, and crackle as a pair of cars speed by. Above them, a mess of faded blues, murky indigoes, and purples sweep out across the sky like soaked fabrics as dusk sits heavily on the last of the light.

 

Since their last major altercation, Emma is finding the spite and the sarcasm easier said than done. Crinkling her chin, she winces at the perfume and spice drifting off of the Mayor.

 

“You know what, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Regina smolders, flashing her teeth, and flexing her knuckles and joints.

 

Thrusting a hand under the left side of the baggy, unzipped coat Emma is wearing, Regina latches around the swell of breast concealed underneath, and reels at the tiny taste of memories it invokes. A smile claws out the side of her mouth, dragging her lips back.

 

Emma grunts, and slams a threatening hand over top, clutching painfully even through the slippery, polyester material of the coat. Anxiously, she scans the empty streets.

 

“Your heart is beating like a drum, dear. Scared of something?”

 

“Watch it.”

 

Crushing, and pinching, as much as she is able, Regina hums when she catches a nipple.

 

Emma wants to punch her, but her arm is sore and uncooperative. Her ribs pump fervidly as she grinds down on her molars.

 

“Leave, Miss Swan, no one here wants you.”

 

“Well, I know for a fact that isn’t true.”

 

“Oh, don’t think because of this,” Regina wrenches her hand out, smirking, as she waves her index, middle and ring finger, “you have consent to stay here and play house with Henry.”

 

She surveys the flourishing temper in Emma. Puckering her lips then, she clicks her tongue cruelly, condescendingly, her spirit flaring brightly at the vehemence in front of her.

 

“He will always be off limits to you. No matter how many times you come scampering into my bed.”

 

Emma flushes, embarrassed at the implication, that she is trash, that she is still never good enough and her self-preservation kicks in.

 

“You want to get into this here?” Emma forces Regina back a couple steps, laughing.

 

“You’re just a warm body, Madam Mayor. Something I can use, and toss and let’s be honest here, touching you is something _no one_ in this town would do if I paid them, not to mention having to deal with your psycho, uptight, neurotic, bitch from hell approach to being a human being. I’m the one doing favours here, and I don’t need you, or your stupid permission to have a relationship with Henry. He loves me, but I can’t say the same goes -”

 

The slap is hard; nearly hurling Emma to the concrete. The pain of it prickles in her shocked and unflinching eyes.

 

Regina stares back blankly, her face draining of all expression, before walking off their corner of the sidewalk to her car, hauling the door shut, and tearing down the road.

 

-

 

Emma is waiting at the gate. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she manages to catch Regina’s glower through the windshield, right as the Mercedes is pulling up the driveway. She plucks her other hand from inside a jacket pocket and massages the two together for some heat. Peering over, Emma blinks impatiently.

 

The car grumbles and Regina parks it with a violent thrust. Her mind is fraying, and she squashes her lips against the nip of her teeth, over and over, and licks at the taste of steel on them. The thought of Emma churns inside her. Whatever is between them, it has to end, because it is tiring unlike any other feeling, the way it will not quit.

 

Unfurling her spine then, she picks up her chin.

 

Regina is reaching for a strategy, when the minute the engine dies, before she even has a good grasp on her keys, there is a loud tug, and the hush of the car interior spills away as the driver’s side door flings open. Hastily ducking under, and without so much as a word then, Emma clambers inside, in a jumble of boots and leather and limbs, straddling the Mayor.

 

The door slams sternly. The seat falls back in a blur, the seatbelt whizzing by immediately after and the keys rattle bluntly as they hit the centre console.

 

“What in the hell are you doing?” Regina shouts, completely leveled and flustered.

 

After a week and a half of threats and dares and zero physical contact, Emma is riled and will not be deterred from what she is come to do. Ripping out of her jacket, and tossing it to the passenger side, Emma quickly shakes out her cold, stiff hands and wraps them around Regina’s face.

 

She kisses her, deep like the ocean and unyielding.

 

It takes Regina by surprise, _the sentiment_ , coursing in on her, splitting her open inside, drowning every space, every gap like high tide, like a slow flood. It soaks to the very edges of her, the enormity of it sloshing through, filling and expanding her. It fills and overfills.

 

Scrambling then for Emma’s fingers, she directs them up her skirt, as it rushes out of her, sticky against her skin.

 

Emma gets her off in moments; the buzz feeling much too brief and all too dirty. Crumpling over the woman, Emma raises her fingers to her mouth and shuts her eyes.

 

“I’m sorry for the alley thing.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“When I was drunk that time, a while back? And I guess that time before your council meeting. And definitely what I said the other day. I’m sorry for those things, and I wanted -”

 

“Stop,” Regina hisses. “Get off, _get off of me_.”

 

“No, wait. Please, just hear me out.”

 

“I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”

 

Her palm slides against the foggy window, as Emma tries to keep her where she is, using every body part, pressing her to the seat, backing her into the side of the car like a hard-headed ram brawling for a mate. Regina fumbles ungracefully, an elbow landing inadvertently on the horn.

 

“I have to – Regina, come on. Just let me – I haven’t been good to you and – that’s not okay. God, woman – will you stop it?!”

 

“ _You_ stop it! This is not what this is.”

 

Eventually, Regina is able to snatch up her keys, and her bag, with enough sense leftover to shove clumsily at the excessively fitted skirt hiked up around her waist. When she stumbles out of the car, Emma is flat on her back and out of apologies.

 

Ignoring the wide open car door, Regina marches straight for her front door, hesitating only to steal a half-a-breath to say, “Henry will be home soon. Get off my driveway!”

 

-

 

It’s only about a week later.

 

“God, fuck.”

 

A mellow light is streaming through the filmy curtains. The desk is crowded, mahogany shelves overflowing with books and trinkets. The sofa squeaks dully under her skin.

 

Emma wants to scream, it’s so good. She thanks the musky air above she doesn’t.

 

Surfacing, Regina rests her chin on Emma’s stomach, and wipes at the edges of her mouth with a thumb and forefinger. Her knees are sore, and she pushes unceremoniously at the leg draping over her shoulder.

 

An unusual numbness settles over the two women.

 

Half-heartedly, Emma scratches at the green blouse, still partly buttoned and hanging damply to her body. She peeks down past her naked thighs, and bites her bottom lip as she observes Regina, in her black lace bra and slacks, breathing quietly.

 

“Come up here.” Emma lifts Regina off the hardwood flooring of the stately study to laze over her, sinking them sighing into the leather sofa. “It gets kind of hot in here.”

 

“The oven is on.”

 

“What’re you making?”

 

“Lasagna.”

 

They avoid moving, staring off instead; mostly alert, and yet all at once somewhat dumbly resigned. The stack of documents Emma came for sit forgotten on top the crooked coffee table.

 

“Are you still wet for me?” Emma whispers, after a while, grazing a few fingers along the back of Regina’s thigh, over the hill and a little too far inside, drawing out a sharp inhale.

 

“Hurry.”

 

For once, Emma is on the same page, rolling them over and removing the slacks with a tingling urgency. She uses her mouth first. For several long moments, she elongates each press and insistence, following every squirm until her chin is sopping. Then climbing her way back, ravenous at the thought of watching what it does to her, Emma pushes in – no teasing, no playing – bumping her knuckles.

 

A tragic look of bliss passes across Regina’s face, and Emma begins thrusting with her entire arm, firmly and obsessively heaving the woman against the arm of the sofa in great, surging jolts.

 

Shaking, Regina spreads her hands on the leather behind her. The shallow breaths in her tumble from her throat in rough, halting patches.

 

Through a haze, she hears a bounding, pattering of feet along the stairs then, and her chest seizes suddenly, as her head thumps the sofa. They have been losing track of time. Her fear seeps out in a hapless moan, and slinging an arm around Emma, curling it deep in the dip of her waist, Regina hugs her tightly.

 

“Mom!” Henry’s voice blasts through the corridors. “Mom? Are you in there?”

 

Emma freezes, and Regina gulps with difficulty.

 

“Yes dear.”

 

Rustling a piece of paper in his hands, Henry leans back against the hefty door to have his conversation (part of him knowing better than to force a closed room, part of him not wanting to have to be around his mom much anyways). He hopes he won’t be chastised for talking at her through a wall.

 

“Is dinner ready? It’s past six.”

 

“Yes, I’m sorry.” Regina tilts her head toward the sound of Henry. “I had something to do, sweetheart.”

 

And somehow, through the grit and the terror is a sweetness in her voice.

 

And somehow, gazing down at the Mayor – the sudden softness in her features, the pureness of her expression, gleaming with a frantic care, a concern unlike any Emma ever thought possible growing up from home to home – Emma feels the world diminish and fade around her like a bleached out photograph. She smiles, and without meaning to begins gently moving her hand again.

 

Regina whirls her focus back to Emma, staring in alarm, but Emma cannot bring herself to stop.

 

“I finished my homework, but I have this school form I need you to sign for tomorrow.”

 

“After dinner.”

 

They are quiet. Emma strokes slowly but with a purpose and meaning. She goes deep. She leans into it. Because despite the precarious situation unfolding just over and beyond the shelter of the big, brown sofa, something else, something more crucial is mounting in the confined and immediate place between their faces. Regina softly lifts her hips to meet the movement running up against her, and doesn’t dare blink for the strange muted feeling of something like peace warming in her belly.

 

“Yeah, okay.” Itching his nose, Henry grimaces at the growling notion of his hunger. “I’m going to check on dinner.” As he bounces away, he sneezes and murmurs, “Hope it’s lasagna.”

 

Inside of the study, Regina tries to count through ten whole seconds, just in case, listening to the receding sound of sneakers on the hardwood. She fails miserably though, unable to keep from anxiously raising a palm toward Emma, _finally_ – clutching at a hot, blushing span of cheek, feeling the sway of blonde curls along the wrist – and like seeing a lover come home from war, Regina kisses her.

 

When she comes, Regina does so whimpering into Emma’s ear, gasping weakly at the end of it, and letting go of a very long, very weary breath as the final full stop.

 

They are afraid to budge, afraid to unclench, and they are afraid, for the very first time, to return.

 

Regina opens her eyes, impassively toward the ceiling.

 

“Why don’t you stay for dinner,” she states more than anything. “Henry will … see you if you try to leave now anyways.”


	2. Chapter 2

Meeting in the early afternoon, they only have about an hour and end up rolling about in a heaving heap on the landing; skin tacky on the hardwood, bare feet dangling over the top step of that first set of stairs. They knock wrists and elbows, adjusting their bodies to the rigid surface, banging a sloping hipbone. But it suits them fine, having it hard and difficult.

 

“Flip over, on your back.” Emma slaps down a sweaty palm, and squeaking, it slips out from under her. Starting below the ear then, her tongue eagerly makes its way, all the way down, and Regina responds vocally at every twist and turn. The two moan through their entire time together, their impatient, impassioned voices filtering through the manor and eddying along the ceiling in a broad constellation of vibrations – here they can let it out, can fuck as loud as they please.

 

And they do until Emma has Regina coming hard against her mouth, and without stopping, a second time with her fingers deep inside, stretching to that spot that makes Regina gush.

 

They both have so much in them they find difficult to share but for moments like this.

 

Pulling out, Emma grasps lightly at the low muscles in Regina’s back. They jump and quiver faintly. She laps idly at the messy moisture, cleaning the dripping.

 

Regina twitches, grimacing, far too switched on and sensitive. “Emma,” she warns softly, groaning.

 

“Too much?”

 

Regina wets her lips, swallowing fretfully, and nods.

 

Crawling in next to her, Emma moves a hand across and holds Regina between her thighs. Weakly, Regina squeezes in kind, squirming slightly before rolling on her side. Skin slicking on the hardwood, she inches nearer, wrapping both arms ungainly in a frame around Emma’s limply waving tresses. Strands of it catch on her clammy skin, and her fingers coil at the roots and tug at the scalp.

 

“What the hell are we doing?” Regina steals a small kiss, lips sticking on her own arousal.

 

“I don’t know,” Emma mutters. She waits for another, less problematic thought, but not much else comes to mind save for a few crappy variations of “Do we need to stop?”

 

Regina doesn’t answer, simply grips Emma a little bit tighter.

 

“Let’s not get soft,” she says after a brief quiet moment, clenching a clump of hair and yanking back sharply. Emma flinches just enough.

 

Sliding her legs apart like glaciers, passing slow, and momentously, Regina takes the hand there and brushes it along the front of herself, smudging damp, wandering marks up her stomach. Her tongue runs over the smaller knuckles, and she sucks on the little bends at the inside of every finger. The smell of what they’ve been doing lulls her.

 

She fits a thigh in between then, pushing up firmly, and sighs at the sounds of Emma rubbing, covering the skin with how wet she is. Regina guides the hand back down to Emma’s clit. “I want to watch,” she says.

 

-

 

The patterns in the fabric sway like waves along the docks.

 

Again, and again, her hand compresses, and her gaze bounces, and she whines with each hard motion forward. “ _Come closer_.”

 

Emma hears her, but it takes a moment to register, and a few more to coordinate her limbs into doing something other than simply giving her leverage to be rough. Her anchoring hand shifts clumsily along the top of the couch as she continues with a deep, rolling dip of her wrist.

 

Regina groans and pushes back. The sensation is simultaneously far too much and not even close to being enough (and it’s because she misses Emma, even though they’ve been sleeping together every day for a week now).

 

She scoops her neck up, the small of her back curving low, her ass in the air. Creasing her eyes, Regina tries to focus on the glass vase, the white calla lilies, the decanters under the mirror. Of course, Emma puts her whole arm into the next one, and her pupils blow so wide everything dissolves to a blur. Pleasure rockets out, quivering her thighs, and her dark hair swishes as she braces a hand up against the rigid leather arm.

 

“Go wider for me,” Emma orders. Her palm is wet and sticky with how much Regina is spilling on every in and out. “God, you’ve been thinking about this all day, haven’t you?”

 

“Yes,” Regina yelps. Her legs spread gracelessly, one knee digging in the cushions, the toes of her other foot pushing off the floor. A third finger slides in, and gently she cries out. “ _Closer_ , come – closer.”

 

Plunging her free hand Emma drops over, skin plastering in places, and bucks her hips to compel her exhausted fingers further. The extra contact makes them both erratic, bumping hip bones and shoulder blades, and after a short while, elbows extending and trembling, Regina does what she can to hold herself up for Emma to just take over completely.

 

Emma pokes with her nose, nipping for a kiss. “Regina.”

 

She twists her head, and as their open, gasping mouths knock against each other, Regina finally comes over Emma and her knuckles and her thighs. The hard-hearted resistance she harbours for every single thing, every minute of the day drains from her. Luckily Emma is there; circling an arm around and jerking her back from falling over the side table, and destroying the vase.

 

They kiss then, simple and shallow.

 

“Where’s your secretary?”

 

“Sent her, on errands.”

 

Emma drags Regina with her and collapses them to the middle of the couch in a haphazard sitting position, legs splaying out, half reclining. “I was getting worried with all the noise you were making.”

 

Regina nods feebly. She folds her own arms over the one still draped casually over her waist, and eases against Emma, though her mind is already preparing for when she will have to get up and return to her desk, read another report, balance another budget.

 

“Are you cold?” Emma taps at her belly for her attention.

 

A heavy snow is still falling outside like white paint splattering in slow motion across the pale atmosphere. The faint sweat on her skin tingles as it dries. “I should have lit the fireplace.”

 

“Here,” Emma says, extending her big toe, and drawing her long, knit cardigan to the couch. She plucks it off the floor. “Put your arms through.”

 

The large, grey thing slumps across Regina’s breasts. She tucks her chin for a better look at it, rising to meet her on every breath, when an unexpected tickle of emotion grows between her brows and in deep beneath her cheeks. Hesitantly, Regina reaches through and covers herself with the heavy wool.

 

“Your sweater is ugly.”

 

“You’re welcome, Madam Mayor. Feel better now?”

 

Their feet touch under a throw pillow, and Regina wriggles hers, resettling as she grouses, “No, Emma, you are ruining all my furniture.”

 

Like securing them in together before an amusement ride, Emma squeezes with her arm, squishes her lips to the soft spot at Regina’s temple, and laughs. Her body shakes and her ribs broaden like they could encompass them both, as if they were suddenly two people who have always been that comfortable being so open and intimate.

 

Regina sharply turns her face upward, eyes crinkled and confused. “What are you doing?”

 

For a suspended moment then they are caught in that great divide between history and possibility, until raggedly, Emma sucks back the last of her reckless laughing and the mood sours. Mumbling, “sorry, I forgot what it is we’re doing here,” Emma uncouthly extracts her naked body out of the embrace.

 

As she is tipped forward by an awkward knee, Regina just manages to stop herself from tumbling to the floor with fingers curling round the brink of the seat. The separation prickles her bare skin.

 

“What is that supposed to mean?” Straightening up, she closes her legs, and the collar of the cardigan droops low against her chest, a quiet panic now blooming where it is leaving her newly exposed.

 

Emma shuffles aside, and slouches over her knees. “It means we’re screwing this up for Henry.”

 

“Don’t bring Henry into this,” Regina snaps, immediately harsh.

 

“This is exactly what I’m talking about. We have this kid between us, and if something goes wrong, it all goes to shit. We can’t guarantee this won’t blow up months later. I mean, come on, it’s you and me –”

 

They sit there side by side, gazing at one another.

 

Regina isn’t sure she wants Emma, wants a relationship with someone she isn’t even supposed to like, to accept something into her life she was so certain she would never have again, let alone with a woman who could take everything from her in second if anything ever went awry; it’s illogical, she knows. But she feels when she is with Emma.

 

Her heart explodes in a multitude of rhythms like waking to a world alive with the bustling of _something real_.

 

“This isn’t working.” Emma starts to get up, but Regina flops a hand and the slouchy sleeve it is hiding in down on a pale thigh.

 

“It is,” she entreats, breathing hard at the realization. “Emma, look at me.” Lengthening over she presses her son’s birth mother down into the corner of the couch, and gathering a sleeve up her arm, Regina lays a palm reverently where Emma keeps the banging in her chest.

 

“It’s working.”

 

The wonder in her spills out and pours over Emma, gaping wide-eyed and speechless.

 

“Yeah okay, maybe,” Emma hedges.

 

-

 

An old pipe groans, matching the creak of the bed frame, and Emma struggles to ignore the annoying lump building in her throat.

 

“Granny gave me the key so no one’s coming in. Stay okay? ‘Til you have to get back.”

 

Regina doesn’t respond. She is done with talking, an arm slung over her face, the other crooked back on the pillow. Only her legs extend lethargically beneath the sheets as the soft mattress sags on the one side.

 

Pulling on her panties, Emma hops up and gathers her things from all the places they were fumbled off or flung to. She is noisy and tactless. Arms full, she dumps everything at the foot of the bed. The emphatic reverberations of boots, clothes, keys, and wallet battering the floor boards, scamper up her naked legs, putting the finest hairs on end.

 

Of course, the racket doesn't seem to bother Regina – lying absolutely still in the middle of the bed, splayed out amidst the bright colors and floral wallpaper like some grown-up, x-rated fairytale. It’s distressing to Emma how the woman can be so damn attractive and infuriating all at once. Honestly, she would prefer a full-blown argument to this simmering kind of silence.

 

“You’re upset,” she accuses.

 

“I’m exhausted, Emma. Now run off, and go do your job.”

 

“Don’t be like that,” Emma gripes, tying her hair up, then wrenching on her jeans. “My deputy couldn’t cover me. I didn’t think there would be any actual calls, there never is.”

 

“Don’t forget your badge under the bed. Can’t play Sheriff without your star,” Regina broods through the grogginess.

 

“Right,” Emma huffs.

 

All she wanted was a long, uninterrupted afternoon of sex, and _time with Regina_ , really. How a wish so simple can go so wrong is still one of Emma’s biggest hang-ups with the universe. She rubs the back of a hand across a nipple as a blustering wind rattles the window.

 

“Why are we always mad at each other?”

 

There is no reaction.

 

“Regina,” she calls out more firmly.

 

“I am not mad.”

 

Scoffing, Emma slaps her hands on her thighs and retaliates with a surly, “You’re a liar, but okay.”

 

Threading a belt through the loops, her phone buzzes again somewhere in her pile and digging around irritably, Emma ends up with a pair of thick, woolen socks instead. She clenches around the dense material, the bones in her hand jutting against the skin. This isn’t how she wants to leave. Just knowing it’s going take the bulk of next week for them to get over this makes Emma want to throw things.

 

“I’m hurt.” The two words float out like a sudden cry across a quiet, open field.

 

The sound is weak, and honest, and recognizing the sadness in it, Emma darts up from where she is squatting and blinks through the slight shock of hearing such an admission – they don’t do that, say things plain, or simple. But as she peers at the wilted, dishevelled form in the bed, the boiling pressure inside fizzles out in a matter of seconds. And Emma wonders how it is she could’ve mistaken the sucking black hole in Regina as anything other than familiar.

 

“Hey,” she says much more tenderly. Wrinkling the ends of her mouth, she feels like an idiot for not connecting the dots sooner. The memory of the last time she had been abandoned, and the exact kind of noise she had made upon realizing she had let it happen yet again, pulses at the front of her brain.

 

“Do you think I could take you and Henry out for ice-cream tomorrow? I know it’s a Sunday, but I’m doing late shifts the rest of the week.” It isn’t some grand, loving gesture (she isn’t capable) but it is something Emma knows means a great deal to Regina. She waits, this time a little more patient. “I know you’re not asleep,” she prods.

 

“I am, and don’t ask me right now,” Regina grumbles, her throat tight and raw. Fidgeting, she can’t help but add, “it’s freezing, Emma, no ice-cream.”

 

Emma smiles at the irrepressible mom in Regina. “You’re right. Hot chocolates then?”

 

There is a long pause; the thin, mint green sheets billowing almost as she breathes unevenly.

 

“Better, Miss Swan.”

 

Throwing aside her socks Emma makes a choice then, unbuckling her belt and shucking everything she just put on straight off of her legs. The pads of her feet stick a little as she strides over to a rickety oak chair.

 

Hearing an odd tinkling, Regina tenses slightly. “Emma?”

 

“I’m right here,” she soothes, crawling under the covers from the end of the bed, and nudging with the tops of her cheeks at an ankle, at her calves to spread further.

 

Regina hums in relief (in some ways, all she cares is that Emma is back).

 

Falling away from around her face, both her arms thump against the mattress as she arches into the feeling of Emma sucking slow and hard. Her hands grope at the head between her thighs, fingers and nails slipping against the cotton, failing to gain traction, for Emma to carry on upwards, wanting to feel the full weight of a body pressing on her. Thankfully, Emma takes the hint, and Regina gasps lightly, feeling a distinctly different kind of length skipping along her belly. Slithering out, Emma blows at the loose strands of hair in her face, and pushes at the sheets down her back.

 

Regina squints in the mild daylight bathing the bed. “Weren’t you leaving?”

 

“I’d rather be doing this.”

 

Her palms graze over the straps of the harness scoring Emma’s backside, fingers rasping over the worn texture of the suede. Instinctively, Regina draws her knees in, tilting her hips up. Her ankles skim the outsides of Emma’s thighs, lifting off the mattress. “What, you wanted a turn at being in charge?” She growls, only half playing. “Take what you want, what you deserve?”

 

“No.” Emma thrusts in. She rolls her hips, and sets a pace. “I just wanted you in my arms while I fucked you,” she says. One arm wraps underneath, and the other slinks up, fingers stroking at Regina’s cheeks.

 

Their lower halves rock together, unhurried, deliberate, and passionate as they savour the ease, because sex is still the one thing that comes effortlessly to them. Regina chokes back an unexpected sob, and Emma kisses her quickly, hoping to help swallow it (for both their sakes).

 

“Don’t ever do that again. Leave me like that.”

 

“I won’t.”

 

-

 

Munching on an onion ring, Henry scrutinizes the two women sitting across from him in the booth, the din of dishes, and dining, and people enveloping them in a muggy affability. Emma is busy with a burger, but glances up and smiles at him now and then between eager mouthfuls. She over-salts her fries. She wipes and licks some sauce from a finger.

 

His mom, on the other hand, is hugging the inside of their booth and mostly just watching him, barely touching her food. A while later she bows her head, spears a bit of chicken, and kind of nibbles at it.

 

“Is this something we’re doing all the time now?”

 

Emma grabs a napkin and a gulp of her coke, before her eyes pop over expectantly towards the other woman at the table.

 

“No Henry, not necessarily,” Regina says. He fidgets in the blue checkered button-up she bought him just two days prior to this planned evening together. “We – well, Emma and I thought if, once in a while, we could have a meal together – the three of us – that it might make you happy, dear.”

 

A warm hand lands on her thigh.

 

“What do you think, kid?”

 

“I like getting to see Emma, but it’s weird, I guess, the three of us.” Henry gnarls his face – a new habit of his. “You’re my mom. And you’re Emma. So it’s sort of uncomfortable, being with both of you at the same time.”

 

Inhaling a big lungful, ready to jump in and step up, Emma flounders, unnerved by how quickly Regina’s skin stiffens beneath her palm. “Well, that’s why we’re doing this. Learning to get along. Better. All three of us.”

 

Although her gaze is glued on Henry, she puts her focus on brushing her hand more assertively, over a knee, and back again across the materials of Regina’s skirt and stockings. Henry eats a couple more onion rings, and swings his legs, thudding the heel of his sneakers softly.

 

“May I be excused to use the restroom?”

 

“Yes, Henry,” Regina consents in a low and solemn voice.

 

He leaps out and treads off along the linoleum in no big hurry.

 

“He’ll come around,” Emma insists. “He’s a kid, but he’s smart, he’ll get it.”

 

“Get what, exactly, Miss Swan?”

 

“Don’t do that,” she admonishes quietly. Latching a hand round the far side of Regina’s lap, Emma tows the stubborn woman in closer. As Regina steadies herself, fingers bending and hanging off the plastic edge of the tabletop, a small irritated sigh streams out of her nose, but she does absolutely nothing to separate from Emma. Their limbs zigzag in a clutter of angles and layers.

 

“We like each other now, remember?”

 

Regina glowers at Henry’s half-eaten plate. “No, we don’t.”

 

Minding the back of the diner and down the corridor to where the restrooms are, Emma bunches back Regina’s taut red skirt, fingers sneaking under the hem, and strays to the one place she knows will be receptive to her; the tips press up gently, her wrist straining against the heavy fabric and the sleek lining of the garment.

 

Her brows pulling tight, Regina abruptly drops a hand and grounds herself on the chafe of familiar denim as the impulse to thrash and berate fires loudly. Because she can’t, doesn’t dare run the risk of drawing more attention than they already have, eating out together.

 

Blunt nails scratch against her stockings, sparking sweetly outwards –

 

Emma, however, is careful not to go too far. “This is what we are together, alright?”

 

Doing her best to sit upright, Regina merely tightens her grip. For an early evening the diner is hectic tonight, and looking out between the booth and the crimson turtleneck peeking under a mess of irrepressible curls, her pupils wobble and gloss over the bottles at the bar, the blotches of color, the spattering of light.

 

She’s not exactly breathing either, taking short, stuttering nips of oxygen, and she means to be upset by Emma’s brazen stunt right now. Except, somehow Regina finds herself gradually losing track of the last five minutes – the unhappiness of them, and the indignation – rather giving in to a need to feel something else, something better for just a moment, maybe two. The feeling is like a reset.

 

“Ruby’s looking over here,” Emma murmurs, withdrawing hastily, and yet, Regina surprises them both by fumbling after those retreating fingers and clamping on awkwardly.

 

Granny shouts an order from inside the kitchen and shouting back Ruby scuttles off in her tiny shorts.

 

Closing fingers firmly around the thumb inside her palm, Emma sighs out contently, “Don’t forget it, Regina.”

 

And like that, they sort of hold hands under the table.

 

Working over some new theories, Henry reappears and hops up into his seat. Upon settling in, he instantly notices how close his mom and Emma are, barely a crack separating the sloping line from their shoulders to their elbows. His eyes contort as they tip in even closer to whisper in that way adults do when they are on the same side.

 

“Emma, you have to leave.”

 

“I still have half a burger to get through, kid.”

 

“No, you can’t stay here.” His shoulders hunch as he leans forward and hovers dangerously over the scatter of tall cups and fragments of food.

 

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Extending her free hand, Regina sweeps the hair from his eyes, but Henry recoils dramatically, plonking down on the cheap plastic seat.

 

“She’s the Evil Queen, Emma, you can’t like her.”

 

The whole room slows to a garbled thrum.

 

Foolish or not, Regina had actually come to believe she could get away with it, having Emma, the permanence of each in the other’s life because of Henry steadily encouraging the habits, the normalcy, the blind determination. Her heart had convinced her head. In fact, as irrational as it was, she had even agreed when Emma suggested they tell Henry the good thing going on between them.

 

This was to be the day they acknowledged how far they have come.

 

Fitting her son should be the one to definitively remind Regina that Emma is not a possible future, but the Saviour, her demise, and nothing more.

 

Her chest begins to scream. She tries to wrest her hand away, but Emma refuses, clenching fiercely.

 

“Hey, that is not fair to your mom. She is not a cartoon character; you can’t treat her like that.”

 

“You have to fight a battle,” Henry squeals in reply. “She’s tricking you.”

 

Regina’s hand jerks out violently and bangs up against the table, the plates and loose cutlery clanging chaotically.

 

“Miss Swan, _get up_.”

 

Her features are dark and severe, billows of emotion rumbling dangerously beneath the skin. Reluctantly, Emma scoots out of the booth.

 

“Now sit and finish your dinner. Henry, please do not have more than one glass of soda.”

 

She storms out with as much grace and consideration to her son as possible (which isn’t much), her bag and her wool coat flailing outwards as she wrestles into them, nearly crashing into Ruby as she hurries down the narrow aisle.

 

“Henry, stay here. Nobody’s mad at you – _just stay_ , okay?” Emma hustles around the crowded tables and chairs, baffled by how poorly that all went. Jogging off the sidewalk, she crosses diagonally in wide strides down the road to the Mercedes. “Hey, hang on.” She grabs an elbow and hauls Regina around, the effort of it lurching them in together.

 

“Miss Swan, this is hardly necessary.”

 

“Stop it,” Emma barks heatedly, a fearful concern flaring in her throat. She braces her left hand on the hood of the car then, afraid of what she might do, knowing they probably have an audience by now. “Damn it, I want to kiss you so bad right now.”

 

“Don’t you dare,” she spits.

 

“I know, and it’s not that, I swear. God Regina, if I could you would know what for.”

 

More than a few people are gawking shamelessly through the large front windows, some leaning forward, some twisting in their chairs. Henry is one of them, palms against the glass as Ruby crouches next to him, urging him away. He gulps nervously, watching them argue so intimately.

 

“You heard my son. I’m evil, and my plot has been exposed –” A swell of grief drowns her voice, sloshing at the sides as the rising pressure engulfs her eyes. “We are done here. Now, _step back_.”

 

“No, not done because you say so,” Emma says, clinching almost hard enough to snap the joint. “You need space, fine, go, whatever. But we are talking about this.”

 

“We don’t talk, dear. We have sex.” Regina writhes away, keys jangling as she turns and stabs ineptly at the lock. “You have half an hour and I will be in to take Henry home.”

 

With a slam, Regina shuts herself inside her car, leaving Emma standing in the middle of the road, staring helplessly down through the window at Regina, staring out despondently through the windshield at Main Street.

 

-

 

“Hiding in your office, eating donuts, Sheriff, really.”

 

“I missed my lunch hour. And I’m working on stuff.” Emma flicks at the strewn out pages and open folders.

 

Bundled in a black coat with a tightly-tied belt, a scarf and gloves, Regina steps in rigidly and swats the door closed. She crosses her arms next however makes no move to say or do anything.

 

Stuffing the last of the doughnut in her mouth, Emma brushes the crumbs from her fingers, and saunters out from behind the desk to the windows with the view of the empty department. She twirls the squeaky set of blinds.

 

“Two weeks, Regina.”

 

“I’m well aware.”

 

Her expression is grim and distant, her mouth clamped tight like a barricade.

 

Regina doesn’t actually have a plan, but she can’t think, she can’t sleep, and she has nowhere to put her misery. So shoving aside the two chairs in front, metal legs screeching along the old, scratched-up floor, she dispenses with her purse and expensive accessories. She keeps the coat on however, merely undoing the tie, the buttons, and flipping the fabric apart from her body with an indignant flourish.

 

“Bend yourself over the desk,” she says it plain and direct.

 

Emma ambles over; she understands Regina is needing to punish her right now, and somehow, Emma is okay with it, if it means they get to move past this place they are currently at. She starts to fold over the cluttered surface. In a _whoosh_ , her head smashes into the papers.

 

Sidling up behind, Regina hisses at how much she has missed the warmth of a touch, the way it tingles like the ends of her nerves are lit up and twinkling. The heels of her hands thud, one at a time, on the desk. Gradually, she lowers just enough for every breath to flutter her blouse against the fuzz of a cheap sweater, but as her hips begin to move, grinding the fabric of her skirt, the resolve in her spine crumbles. She hops her left hand forward, trapping Emma’s loose fist against a budget report as she imagines a different ending for the three of them: ordinary and living in ignorance.

 

For a moment then, it seems like they are going to fuck through it; make it out the other side.

 

Except an unintended kiss occurs, open and smacking alongside the blonde curls at the neck, and Regina is wildly tearing away in a whirl, one hand at her hip and the other gripping her temples. She’s panting, and choking, her feelings sticking like a black tar at the base of her throat.

 

“It’s okay, we’re okay,” Emma bids as she spins around and leans on her desk to gather her bearings. The drab, untidy office is starting to suffocate. She squashes the compulsion in her gut to arrest Regina in her arms, and force the issue, hold on as hard as she can.

 

“This means nothing.”

 

“Regina, come on.”

 

“Whatever this is, we are not in it together, we do not share Henry, we are not some kind of dysfunctional family.” She runs through her points like a grocery list. Forcefully then, Regina swallows on the sorrow creeping out from her stomach, at the senselessness of it all. “You have no rights here, and _you will_ get out of my town.”

 

A mournful laugh spurts out of Emma. “So we’re back to that again?” Standing up to her full height, she frantically searches for what will stop them going in reverse.

 

“You know what; maybe you’re right, because I don’t do family. But I want Henry in my life, and when I think of Henry, I think of you – no, you listen to me –” Emma grapples with Regina as she attempts to sweep up her things, knowing full well to engage will only end in more sex. It gets violent, arms trashing, neither willing to give an inch.

 

“I’m not going to say it Regina, but I’m also not walking away because we can’t get our shit together. For fuck sakes –”

 

Regina is mute and stalks for the exit.

 

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do, but _do something, okay?!”_

 

She rams the woman against the blinds, a roiling anger at the absurdity that two people who want each other can’t be together fueling her pleading eyes. No one ever wants her. She twists a fistful of Regina’s shirt, knuckles gouging into the sternum.

 

“Emma.”

 

“What?” She slams Regina harder against the window, oblivious to the fine line beneath the worn soles of her boots. Impatient for some sort of answer, she slams again, rattling the blinds – “Say something!”

 

“You’re hurting me.” Regina’s voice is small, and wry, and sad they have devolved to that same unpleasant place of all her other relationships. At least Emma is horrified. Using her elbow Regina pries the clinging woman from her and staggering aside, jerks the door open, leaning against the frame. “You are a danger to this town, and to my son, Sheriff. You’re fired.”

 

A mug, with lukewarm coffee still inside, sails down the hall after the diminishing figure of the Mayor. It plummets to the floor, shattering harshly.

 

-

 

“I don’t want any damn pastry, Regina. I want to talk about us.”

 

“Well, I made that as a gesture of good will, Emma, _to you_ ,” she says, her voice lilting to hide the clumsy cadence hammering in her chest. Folding a tea towel, she tosses it to the counter.

 

“To what, say you’re sorry? What the hell kind of apology is that,” Emma balks, glancing over at the near perfect triangle, golden and fresh out of the oven. “Wow, and you only made one; couldn’t stand to spare a couple more of your precious apples?”

 

Regina smothers the glower. “It’s the middle of winter, Emma,” she bites outs, and bends around, opening a lower drawer to retrieve a container. Because this is the only total and permanent solution left, her one way out of her feelings for the Saviour. Emma simply cannot stay as she is in her life if Regina is to have one. “Regardless, you asked me to do something. So I did.”

 

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

 

“I am trying to be civil here, work things out.” Regina dumps the container down next to the pan, her breath picking up. “I am aware you like food. Take it for what it is, dear. Go back to your apartment, eat it, enjoy it, and I will thank you for accepting my efforts.”

 

Her smile is overwrought, and her tone is uneven, and she can tell Emma is suspicious (although she supposes that is always a given). They started out wrong, and now they will end before it can get any more wrong.

 

“Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, but a turnover is not gonna fix what got messed up here.”

 

“It’s a start, for gods’ sake.”

 

“It’s stupid and fucking delusional is what it is!” Emma yells and her eyes double in size, her forehead creasing, nothing making sense, and everything about this impromptu visit flying off the rails all too quickly. “Regina, don’t tell me you don’t feel things, because I know you do.”

 

“You don’t know anything about me.”

 

“Do you know how much time we spend naked and feelings things? I’m not a complete idiot, like you always want to think I am.”

 

“Fine, but this is not the time,” she replies, tersely.

 

“When, then? Because honestly – Regina, _look at me!”_

 

Emotions are firing, like bombs, like bottle rockets, aimless and sizzling through the air.

 

“We can make this work. The three of us, it works, if you would just stop shutting me out. I want us to try. I just think this is – it’s supposed to work. You and me – I mean, shit, we can’t stop sleeping together. Like at all, and that has got to mean something. It does.”

 

Regina sneers, “That’s your big speech?”

 

“No, and the hell is wrong with you?” Emma gestures erratically, fuming and utterly exasperated by how little progress they are making. “Something’s going on. This isn’t you.”

 

Regina’s fingers hit the flat of the counter as she curves forward into the argument. “Not so easy, is it, this talking business? Why do you think I went through all that trouble to make –”

 

“Say it again, Regina, and seriously –“

 

“What, Emma?!” She snarls viciously, “What if I say it, what will you do, dear? Start throwing things again?”

 

“You know what, maybe I will.”

 

Snatching up the turnover, Emma winds back a sloppy, uncoordinated arm, and in a panic Regina rashly slaps a hand over the pastry – the flaky crust caves in, and the hot, gooey centre gushes out against their pressing palms. Gasping, Regina jerks her hand away, buttery clumps dropping and spattering globs of dark brown sugar. Her skin is red and stinging beneath the pieces of steaming apple still clinging to it, and she curls her palm up then, staring at the collected angry mess.

 

“What the – shit.” Emma flings her hand furiously (a heavy corner _shoots_ behind) and tries to rid the rest of the burning stickiness wiping at her jeans, hissing through the contact. She stares at Regina, unable to read her expression through the haze of her own rage. “What?!”

 

There are other choices here, alternative futures to be made and taken; unfortunately there just isn’t any time. Instead, Regina charges forward, forcing the last of the apple up against the Saviour’s gaping mouth. “Eat it, just eat it for me,” she seethes, sparking with madness and regret.

 

The sweetness scalds as it slides off of Emma’s chin, as she rears her head aside – “Ah, jeez!” And yet snapping back, glaring to comprehend, Emma suddenly, and perfectly, sees not the crazy but the anguish in Regina, her face looking utterly crumpled beyond repair.

 

Hauling her in, like a rolling wave, their lips smush together, finally, for the first time in weeks. The kiss is tender for a short minute, on the verge, the thin, translucent paper surface of their truest feelings –

 

But then, it turns hungry and they crash against the stove.

 

Sick of playing around, Emma’s hand darts straight down and in between; to where their lives have meaning, and stars litter their bodies, glittering like the skies are wide open, and the pain loses color, and they have permission to feel; where their skin is warm, like summer should be; where they are everything they hide, and nothing but a touch, following a touch, and a blinding override; where the thought of home doesn’t break their hearts.

 

She caresses through the trousers, however Regina responds angrily, refusing to be pulled under again, and lurches past with a frantic grunt. Emma isn’t letting go though and lugs her back. In the ensuing tussle, their legs tangle and totter, and together they plummet to the kitchen tiles.

 

They land on their sides except Emma is on the offensive, overpowering the other woman. She yanks down on the waist of those over-priced pants, and while the fabric doesn’t budge much, she hears stitches rip by her throat as Regina roughly grips the round neck of her sweater.

 

They are falling back in that old rhythm they had before everything came apart.

 

In her eagerness to have them work again, Emma actually tries wrenching hard enough once to break Regina’s belt, and grunts in disappointment when nothing happens. She changes tactics. Blindly shoving her hand at the waist, she eventually passes under the wool, the lace, and the silk. They both sigh, both cry despairingly as her fingers finally push in.

 

Fervent and breathless, Regina reaches between and grapples with her elaborate buckle. Her trousers are next. With a _pop_ the fabric unfastens, and rending it open, she finally bucks into Emma. They work to a flurried finish, Regina wailing, “ _Oh gods, Emma_ –” although before the high even has a chance to pool out of its finest point, Regina is hauling weakly at the hand, to remove it from of her trousers.

 

Stubborn to a fault, Emma fights it. They struggle pointlessly, arms locked and jerking for control. “Don’t Regina, stop it,” she begs, because there is simply too much at stake. A wrist slips out of her grasp and nearly clocks her in the face.

 

“Emma, this is the battle!”

 

“What the,” Emma splutters, looking up, “Henry?!” The only coherent thought she manages in that moment is _cover Regina up somehow_ , conceal the fact that his mother’s usually meticulously pressed pants are half off her ass.

 

The kid dashes in, his backpack and its contents rattling noisily as he skids to a stop.

 

Horrified, Regina can only blink at the circular pendants dangling above. “Henry,” she nearly sobs, “go to your room.”

 

He picks up a chunk of discarded pastry and wonders at it.

 

“Kid, listen to your mom –”

 

“No, you have to believe Emma. I know you can do it.” And with that Henry chomps down on what is left of the turnover and buckles, as if every single bone were instantly gone.

 

-

 

When it breaks, she doesn’t expect the relief that accompanies it, at having it over and done with.

 

Regina only wishes she could take the blazer off now, if not change into something more comfortable. In these clothes more than twenty-four hours, her shoulders are sore, and her gently, slouching back aches as she sits propped up in the cot. At least the cuffs are warm against the inside of her wrists. Her eyes meanwhile are unfocused, and unmoving, and feeling like they might fall out of her. A ratty blanket covers her legs.

 

She is vaguely aware of Emma in a chair, at a desk, leaning on her forearms, nursing some kind of drink. Regina could use one herself – water would be fine, a single malt would be better.

 

“I almost said it once,” Emma slurs faintly and shoves at an outbox. It skids off the desk, spewing forms all over, clanking raucously on the linoleum. She glares at the cell and squints to pinpoint the woman in the spaces between the tarnished bars. There isn’t much of a moon out in the sky, and only a few small lamps are on inside.

 

“So, can you do magic, and conjure shit, or what?”

 

Several of her fingers stir, but Regina’s mind is elsewhere; on the laundry she is supposed to do, the groceries, the fundraiser, the paperwork to get through, the haircut scheduled for Henry next week. The station continues to hum to itself.

 

“Hey, I’m talking to you!”

 

Her brain sits heavily over her rumpled brows. Although expecting it, knowing how little capacity the blonde has for dealing with turmoil, Regina has her limits and Emma’s inebriated abuse is starting to piss her off. “Do you plan on sitting there all night harassing me?”

 

Blinking angrily in disbelief, Emma rises abruptly, knocking back her chair and claps both hands on the crown of her head. She paces with a pent up fury enough to shatter the windows and light bulbs.

 

“Use your words, dear.”

 

“I almost fucking loved you!” She rails at the bars, jabbing an unforgiving finger. Her face is a crude mess of disgust, when a second of weakness pinches her features (she didn’t almost fucking love her, she does).

 

Sensing a prickling shame skittering across her cheeks, Regina turns to stare at the space between the cot and the concrete wall. “Good for you,” she says. Except barely a minute goes by before her own face breaks and collapses, no longer able to hide her feelings either, the wreckage around her heart finally making sense (she loves her too).

 

“Get over here.” Emma clutches at the front of the cell. “Regina, get over here, right now.”

 

She silently begs for Emma to go home, leave her alone.

 

“I’m serious, _come here_.”

 

“You have your keys.”

 

“And I will hurt you if I get in there, so _stand up_ and walk over here, _now_.”

 

The threat is clear, and yet so is the care, and so is the fact that regardless of the disaster _swooshing_ around them, Regina just cannot stay away. She lifts the blanket aside, moving stiffly.

 

The Emma on the other side however is not _her_ Emma, and Regina visibly struggles to swallow over the fear swelling her esophagus shut. “What do you want?”

 

Reaching through, Emma clamps both hands around Regina’s weary face, clammy and insistent, thumbs pushing on the pliant cartilage at her throat.

 

“Was I all a joke to you? I don’t know what the fuck is going on anymore. I have parents, Henry was right, I killed a dragon. Am I hallucinating? How is any of this crap true, and then every single thing I thought I was feeling between us not even real, when you held me like – I don’t even know – just say it. That you were only using me. Tell the truth for once in your fucking goddamn waste of a life.”

 

“I told you the curse was real,” she says.

 

“And everything else?”

 

The cloying smell of alcohol puffs back and forth as Regina presses her clump of fingers to the front of Emma’s jeans, a bar blocking and clanging against the cuffs. She wheezes as the blonde yanks on her neck.

 

“Emma, you’re forgetting,” she pleads.

 

They are practically in each other arms now, crushed against the hard, vertical lines. Anxiously studying Emma’s face for some sort of recognition, Regina pathetically rips at the zipper and fumbles with the button then. Changing the position of her arms, sliding them over the horizontal section and leaning out, she persists even as her elbows over-extend painfully, one hand pulling the other along.

 

Though Emma isn’t at all wet like how she is used to, she displaces the underwear to the side, and hurries two fingers in.

 

Hissing, Emma shoves the stiff blazer off a shoulder and tugs at the wrinkled shirt underneath. A couple buttons fly with a tiny burst. Then desperate for what she is losing, what she will never get to touch again, she hastily splays a hand out and squeezes a breast, the firm nipple there scraping the sensitive centre of her palm. A boot bangs against the bottom of the cell.

 

Using her left knuckles Regina forces back on the waist of the skin-tight jeans, and tilting up a little Emma hangs to a bunch of fabric.

 

They fuck, but it goes nowhere.

 

Her hand cramps up, and while Regina rubs with her thumb instead, it’s no use, there is no happy ending to be had. Eventually their laboured breaths turn to dry sobs as they slump their foreheads together. Distraught and utterly exhausted, Regina slips out and scrabbles obstinately to hold Emma somehow, even if the cuffs won’t allow it.

 

Emma grasps her forearm. “I will never forgive you,” she whispers. “Not for ruining this.”

 

They stay like that for several dizzying minutes – slack, burnt out, holding each other up – until Emma is too nauseous to keep standing, and stumbles out of the room for somewhere to throw up.


	3. Chapter 3

Emma hesitates, because after barging in so aggressively she’s wobbly on her feet like a willowy birch in blustery weather.  The backs of her thighs bump the big conference table, and she clings tighter to Regina’s elbows as she searches for how she wants this to happen.  

 

“So, you’re finally willing to see me,” Regina says.

 

On every breath out, both their chests heaving, the room stuffs with suppressed feelings and conversations that need to be had (if they are to have a chance).  They haven’t since Regina showed up at the apartment howling for Henry barely an hour after her release, and Emma got rough,  _again_.  Frustration revs in her gut, muscles impossibly wound up from the drive over.

 

“Not really,” she says then, and just starts unbuckling her jeans.  

 

Regina swallows, uncharacteristically subdued.  Her make-up is simple, and her sleeves are rolled up.  In fact, everything about Regina seems distinctly washed-out today.  

 

The belt hangs loose and Emma waits, scrunches her hands by her sides. 

  
 

Regina reaches in.  She is stopped short when Emma’s agitated hands shoot out, grabbing her wrists a little desperately, pressing down on them – an unlikely anchor in a way as jumbled lines splinter across their foreheads for a difficult few seconds.  In the end, Regina merely blinks and complies and clumsily bends to her knees.  In an anxious kind of gesture she tucks back some hair, and the move unintentionally reveals from behind the starched collar of her light, blue shirt, some of the bruising along her neck, like brushes of thick paints. 

 

Guilt tasting like something gone bad in her mouth, Emma quickly distracts herself by glancing around.  There are boxes everywhere, and personal items collected in various piles, all of it neat and organized.  “You’re packing up?”

 

“I’ve been asked to leave,” Regina says, flatly.

 

Frowning, Emma’s eyes track across the fireplace, the couch, the armchair, and all of the other places in the office they have touched, and had moments.  “Right, so they’re officially taking over the town like it’s theirs.”

 

Navy blue panties slide off with the jeans, gingerly exposing hips, a long stretch of thighs, and distractedly Emma settles on the very edge to lean back on her elbows.

 

“It’s what they do best.  Take, and take –”

 

“Stop talking.”

 

Like magnets their gazes snap together again.

 

Emma is struggling to cope. The very seams of her are splitting, and the dirty kind of releases she’s been managing in the shower have only been making it worse, more confusing.  Every part of her body only leads right back to thinking of Regina.  Pressing her lips in a hard curve downwards, she stares expectantly.

 

A stroke of red colours Regina’s cheeks, and she lowers her eyes before shuffling nearer.  The smell of Emma awakens a rush of goose bumps across her skin, and yet, even still memories of performing duties develop like a forgotten roll of film at front of her brain.  Opening her mouth wide, she licks slow, broad lines then, urgently thinking of how they used to do it, deep and intimate without ever really knowing  _that_  was what they were doing.

  
 

Her front teeth slip against an already swollen clit when a hand jerks her face in closer.  Regina pushes her tongue inside.

 

A rhythm builds.  “Oh fuck,” Emma sighs and tremors flourish over her belly.

 

It’s familiar, a memory to hide in, under the covers, a firm mattress, a blur of white sheets, and the hush of possibilities.

 

Except a startling, jolting fear soon follows as the pleasure grows, and Emma grimaces, feeling so wide open, and helpless, like a balloon with no one to hold the string.  Fretfully, she curls her fingers in to feel like she is holding to something, the very tips of something, but she’s flying off all the same.  She hits her fist on the table, twice.  Panicked, she violently lurches forward, knocking Regina back, and tumbles to the floor with her bare ass peeking out from under her jacket.

 

Scurrying up, Emma blushes furiously.  “This can’t be my life, how is this my fucking life,” she mutters while wrestling with her jeans. 

 

Regina sits up slowly, her joints stiff from having so little to occupy herself with these days but for sulking, drinking, trying to pull herself together.  “Well, don’t take it out on me.”

 

“Who else am I supposed to take it out on?  This is your fault, isn’t it?!”  Emma hates how childish she sounds, the stress of it all breaking up her voice.  She’s also way too hot and rubs at a shoulder, nudging a disturbingly soft, pastel sweater she borrowed from Mary Margaret aside.  “Leroy saw you by the school earlier.  Did you seriously go and make a play for Henry, behind my back?”

 

“He is my son, and his home is with me.”

 

“No, he really isn’t, so stay away from him,” Emma spits, bending forwards as if she were lecturing a kid.  “Actually, you know what, I’m not here to talk, all anyone wants to do is talk, so just … whatever.”   

 

She stomps out and the door slams, hard enough to rattle the walls, the layers of plywood and plaster suddenly seeming seconds away maybe from being ripped apart in some whirlwind.

 

As she wipes the back of a hand over her sticky mouth, Regina can’t keep herself from feeling the humiliation, right down to her toes.  She rips a box sitting on the chair in front of her to the ground, scattering books and stationary.

 

-

 

Another eighties tune starts up, and Emma blows out her cheeks.  The reunion is already as nostalgic as she can take, friends celebrating exuberantly in the cozy embrace of the diner.  That is, except for the nagging tension like a haze hanging to the backs of people, because stupidly she thought inviting Regina might be an acceptable thing to do.

 

Stuck by the jukebox at the very back, Emma slowly scans the diner one more time.  The kid is just finishing his second helping of lasagna and as he spins on his stool, fork in hand, he catches Regina’s gaze from across the room and smiles wide at his mother before ignoring her again, chitchatting with Leroy, pointing at the cake Archie made.

 

Regina is sitting alone in a booth at the front, her coat draped over her knees, an untouched glass of water on the tabletop.  Her lingering half-smile is unbelievably sad and awkward as she studies the happy people laughing intimately and having a good time, like she can’t remember how and yet misses it terribly.  It’s been two hours and she hasn’t moved.

 

Holding to the cake knife, Leroy scowls at her and Regina turns away, eyes fluttering exhaustedly with nowhere really safe to settle.

 

Emma's had enough.  Plonking her mug down on the bar along the way, dodging people left and right, she plods right up to that miserable booth.  Telling her “stand up, put on your coat,” in a low voice, she sternly steers Regina out of the diner and down to the patio, where strings of lights are twinkling prettily above.   

 

“Why are you still here?”  Her feelings are a mess, like a bunch of three-year-olds are dipping in her heart and finger-painting all over the floors.

 

“You invited me,” Regina attempts.

 

“No, Henry asked to see his mom, there’s a difference.”  The beer in her stomach tosses as she makes the jab, and Emma huffs, the cold stiffening her lips.  “Everyone in there is ready to stab you with whatever fork or knife they can find, and you’re just sitting there, pretending like it’s totally normal.”

 

“What can I do?  I miss Henry,” she says.  Then suddenly, demurring, looking down as if shy or something, Regina implores quietly, “And you.”

 

It isn’t the easiest thing to say no to.

 

“Sure whatever, you’re leaving now, thanks for showing up, I guess,” pours out in a long grumble as Emma curls her hand around an upper arm, pinching purposefully, and hauls Regina out onto the sidewalk.  Except she can’t seem to let go then, her fingers glued as she just keeps putting one foot in front the other, faster and faster.  Her headache pounds with her boots on the pavement.

 

“Emma, stop –” Regina disparages, stumbling, out of breath, and exhausted by their constant, physical struggling.

 

Pivoting around and over with being polite, Emma seethes, “What is wrong with you, why aren’t you fighting back?”

 

“What is it do you think I’m doing,” Regina growls.

 

“You’re supposed to be awful, and a bitch, the person who destroyed everybody’s happy endings.  Where is all that?”

 

“And I told you once people only fool themselves into believing they can change, but Emma –”

 

“ _Fuck you._ ”

 

The pain in her flaring, Regina wrenches her to the left and propels the combined weight of them banging up against a parked delivery van.  “Is this what you want, what they’ve been telling you?”  Her beseeching comes out fogging the passenger window as it skims the side of Emma’s face.  “Those people in there don’t know me.   _You do_ , you know better,” she practically accuses, and unraveling the tie, opening the neckline of her blouse, Regina frantically guides one of Emma’s freezing hands over her chest, shivering as her skin responds to the touch.

 

Hardening the set of her jaw, Emma sneers, “You know what, I did.  Know you.  And then you tried to kill me, and almost killed Henry.”

 

“No, please,” she croaks.  With her ears drumming wildly, fearful of another rejection, Regina professes, her eyes firm and genuine, “I’m sorry.  For you, I am.”

 

Emma only deepens the creases outlining her glare.  Beside herself with longing, Regina places her other hand, her own, the one more or less obscured from the diner just above the waist of her skirt.

 

“The fuck are you doing?”  Emma checks up the sidewalk towards Granny’s; they’re only about two shop lengths away, and Mary Margaret is sure to be toddling out for her soon.  Head whipping back, fingers are already slipping beneath the fabric.

 

“You’ve been gone too long,” Regina whispers, before groaning softly.

 

A few parked cars along the quiet road are all that prevent them from being totally visible.  Even still, Regina rubs herself and Emma’s brain scrambles like a TV signal, all mangled colours and high-pitched noises.  She’s turned on, appalled, embarrassed for them both, but more than anything, the more she aches for their relationship, the more the betrayal gathers like a severe, thundering storm.

 

“Come back to me.”

 

Disgusted, Emma shoves her right off.  “Oh, now you want me?  Too fucking bad.”

 

A burn of embarrassment finally breaks out behind Regina’s ears then, and she collects the delicate material in one hand to cover her chest, pursing her lips.  Down at her side, those other fingers curl in, squirming, tacky, and hiding in her palm.

 

The looks on both their faces are strained and emotional, all torn up by how ugly things have become.

 

“Just go,” Emma says, cringing.

 

-

 

It would be absurd if only the sky weren’t also a little bit gorgeous, swirling with broad strokes of dark indigo and abstract specks of glittering light.

 

“Would you let go, already!”

 

Regina is flat on her back and heaving for oxygen, having just been body-checked by Emma to the uneven clumps of soggy grass and snow on the ground.  The beams shooting from the two cars, pulled up one behind the other, cause enormous silhouettes to elongate across the clearing like make-believe monsters from children’s bedrooms.

 

“You’re not getting away that easily!”  With a grunt, Emma pins those struggling arms to either side and hunkers down on her diaphragm.

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” she wheezes.

 

“Then what’re you doing all the way out here, huh?  In the middle of the night.”

 

Her shoulders sag, and reluctantly she melts in with the wet, forest floor.  “I needed out of the house, and I had nowhere else to go.”  Regina sighs, and closes her eyes, on the verge of a nervous break, the hysterics of their relationship getting to be too much, even for her.  “And why the hell are you here?”

 

Emma falters, suddenly self-conscious about her rash behaviour.  “I was patrolling, and saw your headlights.  I thought you were leaving.”

 

“Without you, and Henry?”  Regina scoffs, her voice heavy with emotion, upset that even now, after all her efforts – giving over custody, abiding stipulations, agreeing to see Archie – Emma still refuses to believe.

 

A cold wind picks up and clatters some bare branches, like antlers locking.

 

“Why’d you need out so bad?”  Emma warily licks her lips, studying every tiny response.  “Come on, you want me trust you, then talk.”

 

Her body is sore and wriggling uncomfortably, Regina stares up at the expansive sky and wonders which stars she might still have left to wish upon.  Her vision blurs as she murmurs.  “Everything in the house is you, or Henry.  I couldn’t sleep.  I couldn’t think of what to do next to get you to –” Her eyes tremble as she searches the heavens for some sort of reprieve.  “Forgive me.”

 

The fragile moment affects Emma before the words are even out and her brain can catch up, the depth of feeling between them to great to ignore.  Rolling a stale anger around her tongue, she loosens her grip and regrets immediately engulf her lungs. 

 

“Damn it, we can’t keep doing this, Regina.”

 

“I’m trying.”

 

“And _I’m_  trying, I really am, to be okay, with everything.”  Her arms are bent at sharp angles, and rickety as she shifts her weight.  “Nobody gets it, you know, why I can’t just  _be okay_.”

 

“I should have just told you,” Regina says to the dull leaves in her peripheral.

 

“Yeah, you screwed up.  And I was so angry, wondering how you could … Doesn’t mean I should’ve treated you the way I did, how I keep treating you, hurting you like this,” she admits then, and with that her neck just can’t seem to hold her head up any longer.  Sinking like a stone to a muddy riverbed, her forehead lands heavily on Regina’s sternum.

 

Regina peers over at the trees and the furrows in the bark.

 

“Fuck, Regina, I’m so sorry,” Emma mumbles, her stomach shuddering, hiccoughing through the words.

 

“Oh.”  The noise escapes from Regina so abruptly, she almost loses it completely.  The air is thin and the nearness like a shot in the arm, making her heart pump, and her pupils dilate.  Through her own quivering, she takes pulls from the atmosphere in gasps.  

 

The emotion is overwhelming, terrifying even, feeling such  _great love_ , and she clasps a shaking hand over her eyes.

 

A moment later, Emma is gently peeling that hand away and pulling her into a sitting position.  Regina doesn’t cry out or weep, but the tears, they collect across the line of her chin, like distant waters trickling along the roof of a cave, the dripping slow and constant.  Emma looks at her with big, astonished eyes.

 

“You really do … love me?”

 

“… I really do.”

 

The stillness is awful, huddled in the yawn of a thick forest waiting for what next, for _now what_ , as Emma keeps wiping at those tears.  After a while, she lets Emma help her up, and leaning an arm against a tree Regina brushes uselessly at her dirty coat.  

 

“You know that I do too, right?”

 

Sniffling, she glances up and Emma moves in so close, so suddenly, messy curls tickle her face.  Her chest squeezes.  When their lips press together, it is soft, and tentative, and new.  They make-out slowly, their teeth chattering a bit in between.

 

“My squad car is still running, fixed the heater last week.”  Emma makes the suggestion straight into Regina’s waiting mouth.  “And the backseat is big, if you remember.”

 

-

 

There’s a bed, but it seems almost too intimate, being here for the very first time.

 

It’s dim, the curtains are half-drawn, and the wrinkly covers are mostly straight even if nothing else is, and she thinks with a careful hint of a smile, perhaps Emma was making an attempt before she arrived.  Her stocking feet release to the hardwood.  Picking up her heels, they dangle from two fingers as she crosses in front of the bed, and gazing at the untidy closet, Regina flattens her other hand over her stomach.

 

Emma tosses her boots by the dresser, and walks quietly up behind.  “Hey, you wanna go somewhere else?”

 

“No,” Regina says and turns in Emma’s arms, “you asked me here.”

 

“I did, but your place isn’t that far, and I don’t know, this was just –”

 

Regina combs some of that unruly blonde hair back from those honest-to-goodness eyes.  “Shut up.”

 

The clothes go assuredly, and though they’re not rushing, their movements are smooth and efficient.  Regina untucks her blouse, undoing the buttons, and Emma, pulling a long t-shirt off, ditches it in time to take over removing the item from Regina’s shoulders.  Casually, she drapes the blouse over the bed frame as Regina starts in on tackling the jeans.  

 

The t-shirt is lying in a heap god-knows-where.

 

Minutes later they are both naked on the floor with Regina straddling a sturdy lap, thighs spreading while Emma sits, crossing her ankles.  Regina sways as two adoring hands play with her breasts; closer for more, further to watch a thumb and index finger twinge her nipples.  She whimpers gladly when a hot mouth begins sucking on her neck.

 

“Talk to me,” Emma pants, already dizzy.  “What do you want?”

 

Regina clutches Emma to her, arms restlessly sliding up and down a muscled back.  “I just want you inside me.”

 

Fingernails scratch up her thighs, and the tips tease her to find her soaking and so much more than ready.  So Emma presses in, and starting slow, Regina rides those fingers, bouncing in the last of the weak, early evening light.  And while Regina wants to use her voice, she stays quiet (to preserve some of the tenderness).

 

“Touch me, please,” Emma begs when the pace doesn’t pick up much.

 

Groping in between them, Regina teeters a bit as she circles with her fingers for a rhythm to go with whatever her hips are managing.

 

“ _Ah_  yes, yes,” Emma repeats a few times over and it helps get them into something, that’s working, for both of them.  “Fuck, like that.”

 

And for a while they fuck steadily, like that, neither of them willing to let it end too early, except that as they continue it gets harder and harder to keep their balance.

 

“More –  _oh_  more,” Regina urges.  Her lower back bows as she deepens the angle.  Fingers dig in for purchase, pinching wherever there is supple flesh.  Her muscles burn.

 

Coming first, Emma pumps frenziedly to make Regina come as well, with her, and with an extended, stuttering shout Regina braces herself as she stiffens and jerks.  Their thighs are a wet mess and the floor is damp.  Regina slumps over.  Her left arm flops over a sweaty shoulder.

 

“I don’t wanna wait and see anymore, Regina.  I know that’s what I said, but I don’t want to.”

 

The harsh gulping for mouthfuls quickly slows, the oxygen drying Regina’s throat as she waits for the usual excuses to follow then.  Emma’s fingers are still inside of her, and she sinks lower, her body humming fretfully.  “Emma, you have to be sure,” she admonishes, and tries to close her ribs around her lungs, and her heart, to keep from feeling too much, hoping so soon.

 

“The things I have done … there are things I haven’t told you.”

 

“And I’m saying I want to do this with you.”

 

Her thighs cramping, Regina lists forward, and haltingly, arms helping along in thuds against the floor, they keel over.  Lying there, a shudder crawls down the trench of her exposed back, and like how she tucks her son in, she tucks her chin to the mess of curls underneath to quiet her fears.  “It won’t be easy,” she warns, one more time.

 

“I know.  So let’s do this now, with each other, and not make it harder on ourselves, figuring it out years later, realizing all that time we could’ve had and missed out on.”

 

“I’ve missed you.”

 

“I know, but I’m here now,” Emma replies.

 

-

They don’t make it very far today, barely making it through the front door, nearly stripping and fucking up against the wall at the top of the stairs of Mary Margaret’s apartment building.

 

In a hurry they leave a trail of jackets, and scarves, a thin sweater, a flimsy blouse, and hoisting Regina up on the reclaimed wood table, leftover cereal bowls clanking on impact, Emma untangles a fancy bra from their fumbling arms, and flings it over a shoulder.  She didn’t bother with one herself this morning, and her nipples are hard against her white tank top.  She shuffles Regina’s skirt up around the waist and pulls the woman’s wet, lace panties off of those legs and over a pair of stilettos.

 

“Emma, Emma,” Regina calls for her desperately, excruciatingly needy, grasping at those strong arms for Emma to get up and just kiss her again.  Their lips are noisy, smacking through a sort of waltzing rhythm, swaying back and forth.

 

So, maybe they don’t hear the plodding up the stairwell, and maybe they don’t hear the door scraping the jackets back along the hardwood either, but the gasp and the horrified shriek are impossible to ignore.

 

Emma slaps her palms down on either side while a very vulnerable Regina scrambles to close her legs.  Both their hearts pound, loud as if they were actually fucking against a wall, and seeing the dark pink bleed out across Regina’s skin, Emma hunches over protectively.

 

“Is that Regina?”  David bellows, and Mary Margaret swiftly yanks the jackets from under the door and closes it with a bang.

 

Emma peeks around one of her arms.  “Turn around.”

 

“Oh honey, what are you doing with her?”  Mary Margaret splutters, clapping a hand to her wrinkled forehead.

 

“Would you two turn around?!”  As Regina tightens those arms around her middle, bunching the tank top, Emma presses her mouth to Regina’s dark, mussed up hair in a comforting kiss.  A short exhale blows out warm, tousling several locks.  Part of her is relieved, if she’s being totally honest.  They’ve been sneaking around for so long, since the very beginning, and she’s been ready to tell for a while – although getting caught more like ‘making-out on the sofa’ and not so much ‘banging in the kitchen’ would’ve been a plus.  

 

Facing the other way, Mary Margaret is utterly dumbstruck then outraged in nothing flat.  Tilting her eyes to the stippled ceiling, she yells, “You have done a lot of awful things to me, Regina, but to do come after my daughter, _like this?"_

 

“Whoa, hey!”  Emma spins and grabs behind at the thick edge of the table in a sharp, defensive posture.  “Not everything is about you.”

 

“Please Emma, you don’t know her like we do!”

 

The apartment is a buzz of stubborn love.

 

A bunch of jars, appliances, and dishes in the drying rack sit peculiarly in contrast to the hostilities escalating at opposite ends, the length of the breakfast bar becoming a fragile expanse, and all of the endearing knick-knacks potential shrapnel.

 

“How long have you been, I mean, are you two –”

 

“Can we have this conversation later?”

 

Boorishly whirling back, David stabs an accusatory finger in the air.  “That woman was a threat to every bit of happiness in the Forest!”  Knowing her husband’s righteous spirit, Mary Margaret clings to his bulky arm in the hopes of preventing him from charging across the small dining space.

 

“And we’ve been over and over it!  Yes, okay, it happened,” Emma says with a heavy shrug.  “We’ve all done shitty things.  My life  _sucked_ , but I have people who care about me now, you guys included, and I want to live my life.  I want to live it here and  _now_.”

 

“Honey, she doesn’t care about you.  She can’t.  Your – whatever you have, it’s not what you think it is.”

 

“Wow, are you kidding me right now?!”

 

Their voices are starting to overlap but Regina isn’t hearing much anyways, because holding Emma the way she is, she can feel every surge of emotion crashing like raging ocean waves, harsh and brackish on every breath as the family argues at the top of their lungs.  Blindly reaching sideways, she wanders along a forearm, and over and over those sharp knuckles until Emma yields, and they are linking fingers.

 

“Emma, she killed people!  She cursed us all,” Mary Margaret exclaims, bouncing impatiently.

 

“Not to mention the whole town hates her,” David hollers.

 

“Yeah, and I could hate her too.  For all the messed up shit she’s done, I really could.  But she is a  _person_.  Regina is more than just those things.  And I am  _choosing_  to love her.”

 

“Yes, but you can choose someone better!”

 

“Listen to us.  We only want your best chance at a happy ending!”

 

"You don't get to decide what makes me happy!"

 

And it really is a wonder something hasn’t exploded yet from the sheer force of their protesting.

 

“That’s enough!”  Regina orders at last, gazing at the rippling ribbing of the white tank top.  It shuts everybody up instantly , her tone brooking no dissent in way only she could pull off naked and hiding as awkwardly as she is.  “Now get out, and take your sanctimonious crap with you.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Get out!”  She knows, from the way Emma is barely holding it together, this is as much about her, as it is about Emma’s own experiences surviving off of the kind of bad choices she is, even still, afraid to admit to her parents.  Anymore of this will only end in saying things that will take every single one of them so far over the line, they won’t ever find their way back again, breadcrumbs or no.

 

Emma jerks a prideful chin towards the door.  “Please, go.”  Her parents are as stubborn as she is.  Heaving an emphatic sigh, she eases up, and promises, “we will talk, just not now.”

 

Her throat bobbing, Mary Margaret relents with a “fine, we’ll wait for you at the diner.”  They leave, tightly holding hands.  When the front door finally shuts with a clang, Emma slumps and just stares at her beat up boots.  The apartment is almost jarringly quiet now.

 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Regina murmurs, and brushes her lips uneasily over one of Emma’s shoulders.

 

“Yeah, but I did,” she says, solemnly.  Then swiveling around to clasp Regina’s cheeks once more, Emma kisses her, as sweetly as she has ever known how to.  “Because of this, okay?”

 

Flushed, and lightheaded, Regina swallows carefully before fluttering back her eyelids.  “They’re the family you never had, and should get to have now.”

 

“I’m not throwing them away or anything,” she explains.  “But there’s Henry, and there’s also you.”

 

“Emma, no.”

 

She grips her chin firmly.  “Don’t, Regina."

 

It’s now or never – their chance to make it an actual relationship, and more than just a nameless coming together, where no one knows, and someone could leave, and it would be like nothing ever happened at all.

 

"Then have me," Regina dares.  "Please."

 

Emma carries her to the living room and plops her to the middle of the sofa then.  She shucks everything off herself roughly, kicking her jumbled pile of underwear, jeans, and socks aside.  Completely naked, she stands tall, puts her hair up with an elastic, and like with blinders on, she crouches in, pops off each stiletto and tosses them behind.  

 

A pencil skirt soars over a low shelf next, toppling a stack of movies to the floor.

 

“We’re gonna make this work,” Emma says, bending back those flexible thighs until both feet are dangling by their ears, fucking Regina without preamble.  

 

Regina scrunches her toes as she adjusts.  Her neck crooks lower along the sofa.  Her lips, all faded and swollen, fall open.  She is moaning, and coming all too soon then, but Emma goes on fucking her, mumbling against her throat.  Overly sensitive, Regina can feel the hum of Emma’s anxiety in each determined thrust and hump of her body.  She stills the motion with a whimper and a hand covering the wrist amid her thighs.  
  
 

“Emma, it’s okay,” she exhales, and drops her legs.  “They will get over it.”

 

“And you?  Are you gonna get over it?”

 

“Of course.  Haven’t you noticed I already have?  All I care about is you,” Regina assures, tenderly.  She clasps the back of Emma’s neck.  “What’s wrong, something else is wrong.”

 

“I’ve never had a fight with a mom and dad of my own before,” Emma spurts, and she’s laughing, and crying, and drowning a little in her unresolved issues.  “God, what the hell.  I’m sorry.  I just, don’t want any of you not to be in my life, you know?”

 

“That won’t happen.  They love you, and I love you.  Even if that means I have to go with you to the diner, and sit and talk with those idiots until we come to an understanding, alright?”

 

“I love you, too.”

 

“Get up here.”  Regina tugs on Emma then, and their arms and legs tangle as they lie and bundle to fit together on the compact sofa.

 

-

 

“Stop,” she chuckles and reaches behind to wrap a hand around the one Emma is using to squeeze her ass.  “Henry will be down in a minute.”

 

The foyer is drenched in sun, making everything glimmer like spring is officially here, and fresh grass and flowers could be growing out of the floorboards.

 

Emma glances up the grand staircase.  “Fine, then give me a kiss.”

 

“It seems you want much more than just a kiss,” Regina replies, playing with the deeper notes in her voice.

 

“Yeah, well, shoot me, I don’t get to see you all the time.”

 

“I’m right here.  And I will be here when you get back from your day at the docks.”  She slips her hands under Emma’s new, burgundy jacket then and hides them in the nook of her waist.  “Are you coming over tonight?”

 

“Why don’t I bring Henry over for dinner, and we can both stay,” Emma suggests, nuzzling closer, seeking out the light musk on Regina’s skin.

 

In spite of herself, Regina arches her neck, leaning in as she raises her eyebrows incredulously.  “Really?  Your parents won’t have a fit?”

 

“They’re busy moving today,” she mutters.  “Besides, he’s _our_ kid.”

 

Regina draws back, lips parted and astounded, really.  One word, three letters, and yet it is more commitment than either has ever made throughout their entire relationship.  Emma grins sheepishly in return.

 

“So,” Emma folds her lips in before the happiness gets out of control, “can I have my kiss now?”

 

Closing in, their noses bob and weave affectionately against each other (foreplay of a different kind).

 

“Just a quick one,” Regina breathes, losing herself.  “I’m serious, Emma.”

 

“Yeah, yeah.”

 

Hearing the soft thumps, she can hardly distinguish the differences, if the thumps are being made by sneakers or the eager contractions of her heart.  Managing to drag her eyes open then, the unmistakable figure of Henry hovering halfway down warms into focus.  Regina blinks once to wipe the afternoon sex from her mind, and pulls away hastily.

 

“You guys were going to kiss,” Henry remarks, clinging to the banister.

 

Regina exchanges a look with Emma, who is kneading the back of her neck, clearly flustered and getting disgruntled with their situation.  Their son hasn’t exactly been supportive.  “Sweetheart, we were just –”

 

“Mom, you should do it,” he blurts.

 

“Do what?”

 

“I want to see you and Emma kiss.”

 

Gaping so far upwards, she is suddenly very nauseous.  His interest is entirely out of left field, and it worries Regina how much bigger their relationship is these days, encompassing so much more than what they have simply been sharing in secret, for no one but themselves. 

  
 

Nervously, she smoothes down the front of her dress.

 

Emma crams her fingers in her back pockets, and peers over.

 

They wait on her with identical expressions, and the pressure sits uncomfortably in her ears seeing how cautiously hopeful they are.  It would appear they are all in need of something to believe in.  Regina straightens, her heels clack, and leaning in awkwardly, she gives Emma a lame, barely there, kind of peck on the lips. 

  
 

“No, like actually do it, Mom.”  From the stairs, Henry looms above them both – a reminder of their beginning, their  _once upon a time_  – his round face unwavering as he hugs that big, leather book tight to his chest.

 

Evidently it was  _something_  at first sight, that night, that first meeting.

 

Regina realizes then it matters that Henry see how his mothers feel about one another now, the change, and the true love they have with great effort brought into being, together.  She softens, and tries again, and this time their mouths meet in a firm, open kiss, tingling in a way it never has before.  

 

Slowly parting, she notices her hand tightly clasping Emma’s upper arm, the leather puckering, and backs up, leaving a small distance between them.  Both corners of her mouth hike up however, even as she drops her eyes to one side, sucking absently on the remaining traces of Emma on her bottom lip.

 

“Okay kid, that’s enough show and tell for today,” Emma announces, her cheeks tickling and attempting to cover it up.  “Gotta get a move on.”

 

Regina gently clears her throat.  “Well, darling, be safe.  Listen to Emma.”

 

Henry shuffles, sort of bashful, and nods.  Sneakers bending over the precipice of the step, he smirks lopsidedly before scampering down the stairs and out the door.  Stretching her neck, Regina can see him waiting by the Bug, already poring over his book again on that bright, yellow hood.

 

“We’ll be back soon.”  Emma smiles, tentatively.  Then taking a hand in her own, she ambles over to rest their foreheads together, reluctant to leave.

 

“Go.”  Regina squeezes reassuringly, and letting go, pats Emma on the ass.  “Any requests for dinner?”

 

Emma doesn’t have to stop and think.  She knows exactly, and asks, “Lasagna?  You know, because it’s … Henry’s favourite.”

 

-

 

From under the door, a slant of light gives away the scuffling – a pair of boots, and bare knees.  The closet is hot.  An arm fumbles up through the coats, and it’s Emma, hanging with everything she’s got to the bar above because she’s practically there.

 

Regina dips in again.  She flattens her tongue for something soft, but satisfying, working two fingers shallowly, and feeling that familiar squeeze finally she tilts back as Emma whacks her head on the wall, and breathlessly Regina watches that expressive body of hers writhe in pleasure and orgasm.

  
 

She swallows and withdraws, wet right through as well now.

 

Getting up off her knees, she stays mum and merely uses her clean hand to tug the jeans up along with her.  Holding her other hand in the air she mulls over cleaning it on some of the coats brushing stiflingly against them.  Her wrist is gently apprehended.  “No, don’t do that,” Regina scolds.

 

Even in the darkness, it isn’t so hard to tell Emma is licking rather obscenely at the wetness collecting in between fingers.  “Come on, why not?”

 

“ _Because_ , I am not getting caught in your parents’ house with your face up my dress.”

 

“Well, don’t wipe them on the coats, you crazy woman.”

 

“Fine.”  Regina rolls her eyes, and wipes her fingers across Emma’s stomach instead.  

 

They get distracted making-out for a while, and are in the middle of straightening themselves out once more when the doorbell rings out several times, way too excitedly, making Emma jump right out of her skin.  Faster than they can get it together then, the boisterous small talk of people being welcomed to the housewarming fills the hall.

 

“Oh, here we go,” Regina grumbles.  “Now how the hell are we getting out of here?”

 

“Relax,” Emma says, and tips an ear closer, listening to the movements of the laughter.  “I think they’re gone, let’s go,” she whispers after a bit, and opening the door, she manages one whole stride before getting busted.

 

“Oh, you scared me!”  Mary Margaret’s lashes flicker as she comes to an abrupt halt ahead of Ruby, a heap of coats in both their arms.  “We were wondering where you went, almost everyone is …” she trails off and her face falls flat as she spots Regina hovering inside her hall closet.

 

“We’re done now, if you need to get in here,” Regina intones, lifting her chin, holding Mary Margaret’s disapproving eyes.  “Ruby, how are you?”

 

“Great,” she laughs.  “And you?”

 

Mary Margaret clucks her tongue, glancing over at her daughter, however all Emma offers is an apologetic simper and a useless shrug.  No one is keen on being the first to break their delicate truce for the very first time, so Mary Margaret simply grits her teeth and shoves both piles of coats at the two of them.  “I have to check on the oven,” she squeaks, and gruffly drags a grinning Ruby away.

 

Emma can’t help but snicker to release some of the tension from her chest.  “Okay, so, you two are not allowed to be alone together in a room.  Got it?”

 

“Whatever you say, dear,” she replies.  Dumping over her share of things, Regina steps out into the bright daylight of the hall.

 

Emma whistles out for her.  “Take that off, Regina.  It’s a party.”

 

Not happy about having to get comfortable where she is, Regina shrugs out of her blazer wearing a grumpy look in place of the rigid fabric, exposing her bare arms, and a fitted, blue dress.  And while Emma deals with the coats, she saunters to the bench by the stairs for her purse and some colour to fix her lips.

  
 

Somewhat composed again, Regina twists with the feel of Emma rubbing her back, and they trade a few simple kisses.

 

“One day at a time, hey?”  Emma prompts.

 

“You and me, one day at a time,” Regina repeats their little promise back.

 

Their day hasn’t been off to a very good start however, and Regina almost wishes she had stayed home on her own after all when they discover that the entire far end of the living room is in fact staring at them: a broad assortment of wary, judgmental, and confused.  Emma plasters on her best friendly grin, and moseys on with an effusive, “Hey everyone!”

 

A lump of insecurities lodges in Regina’s throat; she has yet to even take a first step, and she is feeling impossibly adrift already, all at sea in a growing fog.

 

“Coming?”  The sun is filtering through the blonde as Emma is extending an arm back, illuminating the stray messy strands from their fooling around, and without hesitation Regina fits their hands together, allowing Emma to lead her through the people to the kitchen where Ruby is waving them over.

 

“Do the skewers for me?”  Ruby asks with a wink and a kind expression.  

 

“You bet,” Emma says, plonking on a stool.  Patting the one next to her, she peers up, and gives her eyebrows a wag.  “You cut and I’ll skewer?”

 

A very prickly Mary Margaret makes a deliberate racket at the stove.

 

Gnashing her molars, and taking a breath, Regina nods.  “You sure you want to be giving me a knife?”

 

“If you get out of control I’ll just stab you with a skewer.”

 

Puckering her lips through a persistent smile, Regina pushes down on the old habits and resentments one more time.  Her stomach twinges in protest.

 

“Wash your hands,” Mary Margaret calls out.

 

An hour and a half later and the house is still standing, despite a rather fraught exchange between Regina and Mary Margaret over Henry having two scoops of ice cream on top of his blueberry pie.  Leaving her son in the company of Archie, happily shovelling the one scoop melting over the pastry from the plate to his mouth, Regina rounds the corner and hides in the empty hall for a minute.  Breathing more deliberately, she presses her ten fingers to the floral-papered walls on either side.

 

“Hey, I looked up and you were gone.”  Strolling up, Emma spreads her hands along Regina’s waist and merely continues on, urging her forward.

 

“Emma, what are you doing?”

 

Directing her to the bathroom, Emma locks the door with a clack.  “We didn’t get to you before we were interrupted earlier.”

 

“We really don’t have to,” Regina sighs.

 

“Yes we do,” Emma insists, manoeuvring her against the sturdy-looking porcelain sink.  “Plus, I figured you’d need a break.”

 

Regina makes a noncommittal grunt in her throat even as she is permitting Emma to scrunch the hem of her dress higher, and higher.  “I’m not in the mood,” she says.  

 

“Okay.”  

 

Emma takes her time to get Regina there and feeling better, hands roaming, and squeezing sometimes; it doesn’t actually take much convincing.  

 

“Go slow, but fuck me hard,” Regina asks.  Worrying her lower lip, she secures her bare leg over a hip, and shamelessly rubs up against Emma for more, the way her body opens up, a relief, like when that first window opens on a hot afternoon.  

 

“We’ll leave soon.  One more hour.”

 

“Am I ruining it for you?”

 

“No.  They’re nice to me so it’s easier sometimes.  For me.”  Emma runs a hand along the underside of that elevated thigh and over a rounded cheek until her thumb is smearing Regina’s expensive underwear in arousal.  “But here’s the thing, they’re not nice to you and that sucks, so that’s why you have me.  Now don’t be loud.”

 

Regina gasps.  “ _I can’t_ , if you are going to do  _that_.”

 

-

 

Emma is staring up at the ceiling.  The bed is dishevelled and all of their clothes in a small heap next to it on the carpet, like a hurricane touched on the spot, though the rest of the room remains ordered, neat and minimal.

 

“Wanna go for a walk after lunch?  Get ice-cream, a little Sunday treat?”

 

“Just the three of us?”

 

“Yeah.”  She plops her cheek to the pillow, listening patiently.

 

“As long as we don’t make a habit of it.”  Regina’s voice is low and relaxed.  “The ice-cream part, I mean.”

 

Rolling on her side and easing over to middle of the mattress where Regina is lying with her back turned, Emma aligns herself with the warm, naked body on display, and bites at an ear.  “Figured as much,” she assures.

 

Her hand sneaks under the cotton sheet that’s just barely covering a hip, and coasts down Regina’s belly, settling in between.

 

“Again, already?”

 

Emma sucks in a breath, and in pleasant surprise.  “You’re still wet.”

 

“Just knowing you’re beside me …”

 

Opening her eyes, Regina twists her upper body over, and looking up fondly, kisses Emma.  The remainder of her follows as their mouths deepen.  Retrieving the hand from between her thighs, she squishes her lips a couple times to the knuckles, laces their fingers, and brings them to rest on the bed.  “And what are your parents doing, unsupervised in my house, while you’re up here with me?”

 

“Building a fort in the backyard with Henry.  Something temporary, and not dangerous, I promise.”

 

Regina gently scoffs.  “Henry showed me his ‘plans’ the other day.  Didn’t look temporary to me –”

 

“ _Anyways_ ,” Emma says, rubbing their legs together and knocking ankles.  “I told them I’d keep you occupied, so they could have uninterrupted time with their grandson.”

 

“I see.  You made me the bad guy.”

 

“For a good reason.”

 

“There always is with you Charmings.”

 

“Yeah, so I could have you all to myself, and we could …” Emma’s not usually a mushy kind of sentimental, but the way they are just casually, and even playfully, having this particular conversation, so close, makes her heart beat a lot faster “… god, I can’t actually say it.”

 

“Say what?”

 

“Make love,” Emma snorts, and Regina snickers along.

 

In the quiet then, they drift for the next hour or so just above sleep, falling under sometimes, their profiles outlining the pillows, and kissing to wake the other person up now and then.

 

Eventually, checking the clock at her bedside, Regina softly says, “One more?”

 

Emma smirks.  “Yeah, always.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story was a crazy long haul for me, but I've learned so much! Thank you for sticking it out with me while I fumbled my way through. The original concept kind of got sideswiped by plot. Hope it's still an okay read!


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